advice on using NAT with a wireless base station

hi,
i'm setting up a home network with a win2003 server as the domain
controller, running dhcp and NAT to share out the server's internet
connection to the other clients. i'm looking for some general advice
on whether my proposed configuration is possible.
my internet connection is dial-up at present, but hopefully broadband
in the future. i want to get a base station that isn't tied in with a
dsl modem or other such thing. i'm hoping that the base station will
provide the basic network connectivity to all the clients, and that
NAT on the server will take care of internet access for all the
clients, for whatever type of internet connection is configured on the
server.
so: the server will have an ethernet interface to the base station,
and a separate modem interface of some sort to the internet, and all
the other clients will get DHCP from the server and internet access
through NAT on the server, and base station will make it all work...
sounds too good to be true?! i'm a newbie with wireless, but i've
been reading around a lot. just wanting to make sure i buy the right
wireless hardware.

many thanks in advance for any help
tim


Tim Mackey

It is certainly possible.

There are basically two ways to go about it. You can let the
router/firewall look after DHCP,NAT etc and run the server (with one NIC) as
just another client on the LAN, using the router/firewall as the gateway. Or
you can make the server the LAN gateway, and have a second NIC which
connects only to the Internet router.

If you just want to get it up and running, the first option is probably
easier. But if you want to use it to gain experience in configuring the
server to do these things, go for the latter. The server config is then
similar to the setup where the server has a direct connection to the
Internet or to a DMZ. This is how you would set it up for a dialup
connection to the Internet.

If you set it up now using a dialup connection, you can get a separate
router with your ADSL setup, and replace the dialup with an ethernet
connection to the router. But most routers these days include DHCP and NAT,
which you don't really need if the RRAS server is doing that already. But
connecting the ADSL directly to the server can be tricky (depending on the
supplier and what system they use).

"Tim Mackey" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:(E-Mail Removed) m...
> hi,
> i'm setting up a home network with a win2003 server as the domain
> controller, running dhcp and NAT to share out the server's internet
> connection to the other clients. i'm looking for some general advice
> on whether my proposed configuration is possible.
> my internet connection is dial-up at present, but hopefully broadband
> in the future. i want to get a base station that isn't tied in with a
> dsl modem or other such thing. i'm hoping that the base station will
> provide the basic network connectivity to all the clients, and that
> NAT on the server will take care of internet access for all the
> clients, for whatever type of internet connection is configured on the
> server.
> so: the server will have an ethernet interface to the base station,
> and a separate modem interface of some sort to the internet, and all
> the other clients will get DHCP from the server and internet access
> through NAT on the server, and base station will make it all work...
> sounds too good to be true?! i'm a newbie with wireless, but i've
> been reading around a lot. just wanting to make sure i buy the right
> wireless hardware.
>
> many thanks in advance for any help
> tim