[ale] Internet connection question

[Brian Chase]

Well, external hosting may save you some money, but your linux box won't 
be doing the heavy lifting then.  Alot depends on how many accounts 
you'll need to host and how many integrated services you'd like to run 
off it.  I like the flexibility of doing it myself because I can create 
an unlimited number of email accounts on the fly for no additional 
charges, but if you've got just a few people in your organization, I 
think it turns out cheaper to do it all on an offsite hosting service. 
You'll be ahead of the game with hosting it yourself if you want to do a 
"Groupware" solution similar to MS Exchange, with calendar, to-do, etc...

If you want to host it yourself, I recommend a fresh load of Mandrake 9.2 
once you're public, static IP address is established with your DSL 
provider with a business class service that doesn't block any ports. 
Mandy9.2 has some great wizards that will auto-install and configure DNS, 
Postfix email server, firewall, and HTTP server during the installation. 
  Your Linux box will be your DHCP server for your office network then, 
so you'll need two NIC's in it before starting the install.  One going to 
the cable or DSL modem, and the other to a 100BaseT switch where all the 
other local computers are attached to.  This setup will also allow you to 
do value-add like content filtering, spam filtering, and VPN's that 
terminate on the Linux box.  I've done this as a newbie over a year ago 
and it just worked, first time (i was amazed).

Mandrake 9.1 does most all that too, but I think you'll have an easier 
time installing fresh if you can move your data to another box for a day 
or two.  Beside Mandrake 9.2 is alot nicer and doesn't have the bugs that 
Mandrake 10 does.



Walter Sams wrote:

> let me try to answer all points in one email   mmmmmmmmmmmmm.......
> 
> We have not yet looked into having a business class public isp address, I told 
> my it guy to keep it simple and cheap so he has not hit on this plan yet--I 
> will pass it on and we may have to do something like it.
> 
> I did try having multiple identies in kmail, but infact the server kicked back 
> my emails.  I couldnt figure out how to have different user names and 
> passwords and get them to go through in the right order.  (still working on 
> that though)
> 
> My big problem that I see with using the isp is that the isp needs to be 
> hosting the web domain.  Currently that is not the case, I have one dsl 
> provider, another isp and another domain host.  (bad plan, right?)
> 
> I am using mandrake 9.1 , kmail 1.5, sendmail is used to handle all of our 
> email in the office.
> 
> From the posts, it seems as though I need to move to a single source for 
> internet access and work from there????  
> 
> I am unfamiliar with setting up my own public ip address, is this a difficult 
> undertaking?  expensive?  
> 
> Thanks to all for your assistance.
> 
> Walter Sams
> 
> 
>  
> On Wednesday 07 April 2004 12:24 pm, Geoffrey wrote:
> 
>>Sean Kilpatrick wrote:
>>
>>>-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1
>>>
>>>On Wednesday 07 April 2004 11:31 am, Walter Sams wrote: | IE   I want
>>>all email to be seen as comming from  myname at mycompany.com, | but my
>>>isp mail server is mail.joesmuck.net  and my user for the isp |
>>>account is dummy at joesmuck.net
>>>
>>>Walter, This tip probably won't help much, but kmail can be easily
>>>configured to accept more than one "identity" -- myname at mycompany.com
>>>That string value will be inserted into the headers on the "From:"
>>>line.
>>
>>This won't work because the MTA will produce improper headers, thus some
>>messages will bounce because they don't reverse resolve properly.
>>
>>Again, I'd suggest Walter use his ISP to provide these services.  I
>>assume they are already hosting your domain?
> 
> 
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