Networking with Linux.

For the past 5-6 years I have been using Linux mostly Red Hat and Fedora Core Linux Distribution. The experience has been a very pleasant one. This operating system has been growing in features and performance in leaps and bounds. Today it has excellent gui for almost every work. This operating system can be used in conjunction with different opensource and free softwares to implement a very low cost networking solution for :-

• Gateway Server (with iptables).
• Firewalls (with iptables)
• Proxy Server (with squid)
• Gateway server with caching (iptables with squid).
• Url filtering (squid guard with squid).
• Name Server (with bind).
• DHCP server.
• Dial-up Server.
• Web server.
• Mail Server.
• FTP Server.
• LDAP Server.
• Database Server.
• Shared file system with NFS and Samba.
• Logging.

The above table depicts few solutions that can be implemented using Linux and in reality Linux has much to offer. In short we can say Linux as System and Network Administrators' paradise. And I am sure in times to come it will have lot more to offer.