Newbie Network questions

Hello linuxiae,

[originally posted to linux.redhat, no responses so far]

I'm a Linux newbie. I installed RH9 on both home PCs a few weeks ago.
Both are now dual-boot with W98. I'm trying to learn some networking
basics. I've been able to get the NICs in both machines working and
talking. If I go W98 --> Linux in either direction, Samba works fine. If
I connect the Linux "client" to the W98 ICS box, I can get on the net OK.

If I go Linux --> Linux, there are some issues. I can get NFS to work,
although I've not tried to do much with it. I tried to set up IP
forwarding and masq'ing so I could connect with the client via the
server's modem. The necessary services seem to be installed and running,
but it's no go. From the client, I can ping the server IP address
assigned by the ISP, but I can't ping anything out in the Big Cloud.

Do I need to be using some sort of authentication? I tried to set up NIS
and I cannot get YPSERV to start.

Maybe it's more basic. I don't think I have DNS set up right. Do I need
to name both machines "localhost.localdomain"? How can I change this
without fouling up the loopback on 127.0.0.1? What values should I use
in the DNS search path fields? I'm using a static IP for the NIC of
192.168.0.1.

Well, that's enough for starters.

Thanks,

John