[Viper]

I've been reading a lot about small business network design and some have said that if you only have one NIC on your server, you could connect the ADSL router to the switch along with the server and clients.

In a roundabout way, this could provide everyone with easy internet access. However, what if you configured net access to be shared through the server?

Would you lock connections to the ADSL router to the MAC address of the server NIC? In other words, how would you prevent everyone and anyone with access to the switch from gaining net access?

[zx10guy]

Well, the simplest way is to lay down a proper security design. This means, users ONLY have user level privileges on their machines. You being the admin would have administrator rights. You would then go to each box which you don't want to have internet access and take out the default gateway from the TCP/IP properties. Without a default gateway set, they're not getting out to anything on the internet.

[JohnWill]

If you want all the Internet traffic to go through the server, the way to do it is with a second NIC on the server.

[Viper]

Yeah, thought the second NIC was the way to go. I was in an office the other day and they all had net access with only a single NIC on the server. The router was hooked up to the switch as was the server.

Looking back, I don't think there is any Internet access control in that example.