Setting Up Internet Connectivity

If you have selected one of the Novell® Small Business preconfigured server patterns or installed iManager and WAN Connectivity, you can use the Novell Small Business Setup Role in iManager to help set up Internet Connectivity. Using this tool, you can specify the setup requirements from a browser dialog, and then the setup tool interfaces with inetcfg.nlm to run all the required screens on the server.

This Internet Connectivity task helps you configure the external network interface that goes to the Internet. During the interaction of the utility, you choose whether or not to enable Network Address Translation (NAT). We recommend that you enable this option so that internal packets from the workstations are masqueraded to appear as if they come from the server and packets originating from the Internet to the workstations are rejected unless the connection was first initiated by the workstation. This provides a minimal level of security to your internal network. An exception to this rule is if you are using an external gateway router (or modem) to get to the Internet. If this is the case, you can choose to enable NAT in the gateway and you will not need to enable NAT on the server. Eventually, you will probably want to configure BorderManager® on this server to add packet filtering and proxying capabilities to further protect your internal network.

This Internet Connectivity task collects the information you provide on the Web pages and feeds keystrokes to the server console utility, inetcfg.nlm. You might want to watch the server console as it completes the configuration to see which dialog boxes are being invoked in case you are not familiar with inetcfg.nlm and want to manually make changes on your own later. Also, the configuration might occasionally fail; if it does, you must manually unload inetcfg.nlm, clear the Internet Service Provider Configuration screen, and rerun the utility.

To use the setup task in iManager, open iManager, click Small Business Setup > Set Up Internet Connectivity, and then follow the on-screen prompts.

If you need to modify the settings, you can rerun the setup task or use inetcfg.nlm or the Web-based TCP/IP Configuration utility to make further modifications to your TCP/IP configuration.

The Set Up Internet Connectivity task supports the following connection types:

Whichever Internet connection mechanism you use, we recommend that you configure your server with two network interfaces, an external and an internal. These interfaces can consist of two LAN cards, or one dialup/ISDN modem and one LAN card, etc. The external interface is connected or routed to the ISP. The internal interface is typically a LAN interface that is connected to a hub attached to the workstations. The external interface is typically assigned a public IP address (or receives a dynamic address from the ISP), and the internal interface is typically assigned a nonroutable address you provide. For the internal interface, we recommend 192.168.xxx.xxx address numbers. For example, 192.168.1.2 is a good number for the server's internal interface.

In this dual-interface topology, the server acts as a router, firewall, and proxy for the workstations to access the Internet. Packets from the workstations do not go directly to the Internet, but instead must pass through the server. This allows client workstations to use server services such as DNS, DHCP, file sharing, printing, and e-mail without routing to the Internet. This also protects the workstations from security threats that might exist on the Internet.

For more information, see the Novell Netware TCP/ IP Administration Guide for OES in the OES NetWare online documentation.