Mweb's FON router and gateway/proxy tomfoolery

[nanonyous]

As you probably know, Mweb's FON routers don't let you configure them to not connect to the 'net themselves, and Mweb's accounts only allow 1 connection at a time.

So. Am I correct to assume that if I set up a proxy server on my PC on the network and then point all other computers to it (maybe set it up as the DHCP server and turn off the DHCP server on the modem, at least, pointing my PC to it as its gateway manually), that I'd be able to use my computer as the router and perform traffic filtering with it?

My goal is primarily to throttle the other computers on the network as multiple instances of Farmville and Buttholefeeled 4 do not gel on a 4Mbps connection at all. In fact, even /one/ instance of FV cripples BF4.

It's been more than 8 years since I've had to do anything remotely like this, so my knowledge of networking has degraded drastically in the interim.

Can draw a crappy MSPaint picture of what I intend on doing if absolutely necessary.

 

[The_Unbeliever]

Yes. You can do it.

It is called a double-NAT setup.

Keep in mind that it will work, but some services may not like double-NATting... YMMV. I tried it once, it works... but like I said, YMMV

1. Download Smoothwall/pfSense/ipCop, burn to disc (Keep in mind that it is a DEDICATED firewall, and will OVERWRITE any data on the target PC during installation
2. Obtain a spare PC (Pentium III with more than 64Mb RAM should be sufficient, and a 10Gb HDD) and with TWO network cards.
3. Install Smoothwall/pfSense/ipCop to said PC
4. Set up GREEN for your network as you want (DHCP etc). Use this firewall as your default gateway for your network.
5. Set up the MWEB router to push out/reserve a static IP to this firewall PC.
6. Configure your RED interface with the static IP from point 5. Use the Mweb router's IP as your default gateway on this firewall.
7. Test, it should work. If neccessary, you can forward ALL ports to your new firewall.

If you can, perchance, set the Mweb FON router up to allow bridging on its ethernet port, then you can use the firewall in PPPoE mode, no need for double-NAT setup. (preferred).

Good luck!

 

[nanonyous]

That's the less-desirable approach I'd take, yeah. Already have a box ready to go for it which just needs a second NIC and would likely be using Sophos UTM at this point. This approach is of course less preferable due to the increased power consumption for nothing but a firewall.

Mweb's rebranded Technicolor router seems to have bridging enabled by default with no way to turn it off. It's also seemingly-impossible to set it up to not use an Mweb ADSL account, so I could potentially set it up with a capped one to free up the uncapped account for use on my gateway system; this would then become my own desktop which is already on for 14-20 hours a day, so it might as well be on 24/7 instead of the aforementioned dedicated gateway box. I hadn't thought of the capped account approach before but will see if I can get that going tonight, because the latencies I'm having to deal with at times are getting to be a bit ridiculous... never thought two large farmville farms could be this taxing on a connection =_=

Will report back once I've given the capped account segregation method a shot with the results. My suspicion is that due to the router's auto-configuration it won't work, in which case I may just pull out my prior Netgear modem-router and use that instead; not like anyone seems to ever come use our FON connection anyway.

*edit* Well, looks like Mweb don't offer a once-off capped account which doesn't expire at the end of the month, the way Afrihost and similar do, so I'll need to set up the old modem-router after all. The process for using that should be fairly straight forward, I'm just going to need to remember to set up the modem as the gateway when I go away from home so load-shedding isn't a factor in whether the other users of the connection have internet access or not with regards to my computer's on/off state.