Hello everyone, as usual there are newbie's and alas I am one of those so please be patient while I learn. I am interested in stetting up a fire wall for my house network. There are 6 machines in total all running from a Linksys cable modem router that attaches to att@home cable modem. Below is a diagram and I assume that the firewall would go where the Linksys router is (since it forgets its config and requires a reset and re-config once every 2 weeks) box1 box2 box3 box4 box5 \ \ | / / \ \ | [HUB] \ \ | | ---------------------------------------------- | linksys router | ___________________________ | [cable modem] | (attbi) So I am wondering can and should I use SuSE 7.3 with a minimal install and very few services running including firewall2 (?), NAT, and DHCP. I do not need to access the machine remotely but I would like to packet filter except for basic web use including SSL and ftp and tftp. Games are not much of a concern. I have read a great deal about how a firewall should work "in theory" but I lack the practice of building one. I understand the basics of the rule sets but I do not want to leave something open of undone. Basically if anyone has done this for home use I would love to know how it works for you and if I should even peruse it at all or if I should use a different OS like OpenBSD or such. I hope that this post is warranted upon this newsgroup if it is not please let me know. Sincerely, Ash ash@lightwave-systems.net