Is static IP address required for scalix server?

[drokmed]

Our linux server is also the firewall and webserver, connected directly to internet.

There are two NICs:

the WAN/external uses dhcp to get addr from ISP
the LAN/Internal is static.

I know a static IP is desirable, but our ISP charges triple if we convert to their business solution, which our boss is not willing to do.

Is it possible to use this setup? I've already tried it, and scalix binds to our internal 192.168.1.1 address, and although works great internally, is not accessible from Internet.

Thanks

[carloscs]

Save yourself a lot of trouble: get a cheap/old computer and make that computer the firewall. I now use an old pentium III - 700MHZ and a few months ago was using a pentium III - 500Mhz with no problems.

You can then easily configure the "new firewall" to redirect the traffic you want to your scalix server. I only have the SWA accessible to the outside, but it's easy to have outlook too for example.

If you don't do that, you have to detect when the ip changes, reconfigure the scalix to work with the new ip and restart the scalix-* services. Not an easy thing to do and mantain.

In both settings, you have to detect a change of ip and make that available to the outside somehow: google for "dynamic dns".

[kanderson]

Agreed. Download IPcop for a basic firewall, or pfsense for a much more powerful one. Both are free, and will provide soma valuable features such as VPN connectivity, Proxy Caching, and a web GUI for administration.

Kev.

[drokmed]

Thank you both, I will do that. I have a P3 550 w/ 256MB RAM & 6GIG HD, that should do.

I never heard of pfSense. It looks fantastic! I haven't messed with BSD in about a decade, but the web interface looks quite robust. Even the dyndns client is integrated. DING! I'm downloading it now, thank you for that suggestion.

I've been running shorewall w/ webmin, and although it works well enough, everything had to be manually set up. IPCOP doesn't look that much more advanced, not compared to pfSense anyways IMHO.

Has anyone tried Vyatta yet? It's been getting alot of press lately, but still looks new. I think I'll go with pfSense.

Thanks