Smoothwall firewall issues

[Zeebaru]

Hello,
I have been working for the last few days trying to get a hardware firewall up and running, I have a small amount of knowledge about networking/linux etc but this is really testing me, I have been using a POS Duron system with smoothwall, however I am having some greater philosophical issues with the setup, wondering if someone can help me out:

I have a very budget ADSL router at the moment, would smoothwall be able to effectively replace my router? The book says yes, but does this work in the real world (where would the telephone cable go?), and would it be better?.

Also, it doesn't bother me too much about getting it to be a router, but ideally I would like to make the box into a firewall, but this is being troublesome;

-If router runs 10.1.x.x then does firewall and everything below need to be 10.1.x.x? What about subnet?
-If I want to port forward, do I forward to the firewall IP, then forward to the single PC or do I not do anything at the router and start the forwarding at the firewall?
-Is it easy enough to have unrestricted file sharing between computers below the firewall?
-If I wanted to ping someone who was above the firewall in the network, would that work?

I know many of these questions are probably easy to answer and basic, but I have yet to find a detailed yet easy enough to understand guide to anything to do with smoothwall. Alternativley, if someone can recommend an alternative firewall they think would be better and provide links to how to set it up etc.

Thanks heaps.

[z1p]

I have a very budget ADSL router at the moment, would smoothwall be able to effectively replace my router? The book says yes, but does this work in the real world (where would the telephone cable go?), and would it be better?.

Also, it doesn't bother me too much about getting it to be a router, but ideally I would like to make the box into a firewall, but this is being troublesome;

It can replace a router, BUT not a modem.

-Is it easy enough to have unrestricted file sharing between computers below the firewall? That should be how it operates by default.

-If I wanted to ping someone who was above the firewall in the network, would that work? On your network outside the firewall? The answer in any case is, 'it depends how you configure your firewall'. This assume who you are pinging isn't blocking pings.

-If I want to port forward, do I forward to the firewall IP, then forward to the single PC or do I not do anything at the router and start the forwarding at the firewall? If the firewall is the only thing you have connected to the router, then you may want to consider disabling the router's firewall or you could put the firewall in the router's DMZ. Either way you wouldn't have to worry about port forwarding at the router, you'd just need to take care of it at the firewall.

-If router runs 10.1.x.x then does firewall and everything below need to be 10.1.x.x? What about subnet?You most likely just want to run a single subnet behind the firewall (10.x.x.x) and let the firewall get its external IP from the router/ISP.