Some information about the Van Area Network (VAN):
Sat Sep 25 00:25:22 PDT 1999 -- The VAN is up!! Yay!
What is the VAN, you may be asking yourself? Well I'll tell you. The Van Area Network (or VAN, as we like to call it) is a conglomeration of several things. At the heart of the VAN is a Ricochet wireless modem, which is attached to an Intel based laptop which is running PPP software under the Linux operating system (specifically, I'm running S.u.S.E's 6.1 distribution.) Also running on the Linux laptop is a DNS server, a DHCP server, and, in the kernel, some routing software, with IP Address Masquerading. Then there's an ethernet cable which runs down to my left foot, where it attaches to a Linksys minihub. That mini-hub then also has cables running from it to the various other laptops that are in the van. These other machines obtain an IP address from the DHCP server, can do domain name lookups from the DNS server, and can connect to the Internet thanks to the network address translation.
Any questions? ;-)
Ugh, well, it's flakey. Ricochet coverage is not what it could be. I'm thinking next time we'll have to have some sort of backup (or perhaps several), such as a modem attachment on a cell phone, or something...