Shoutbox

so I want to reconstruct my network
to look something like this


will I run into problems having the dhcp server set up not on the  modem?

and I'm thinking of using fedora for this role of dhcp/dns, does anyone have any better suggestions?

No problems as long as it's handing out 192.168.1.1 as the default gateway and 192.168.1.2 as the dns address.

Why not just have the OSX Server do DHCP and DNS?

As wj says, it will be fine.  It's a standard configuration for small Windows AD networks, because Active Directory absolutely requires dynamic DNS updates.  You will have to decide whether you want the DNS server to handle recursion (actually resolve things itself) or maintain a valid list of forwarders (Your ISP's DNS servers, 8.8.8.8 etc.), but neither is particularly hard to set up.

As wj says again, why not just let the OS X server do it?  It could do your web serving too.  You would have to have thousands (or more likely tens of thousands) of clients to justify dedicated hardware for DNS/DHCP, so separating these functions is quite unnecessary -- unless you are just doing it for experimental and learning purposes.

Lastly, I recommend using a different RFC 1918 address block than the ridiculously common 192.168.1.*.  The problem with that is everybody uses it and if at any point you want to VPN to somebody else's network or do something similar, that is your best bet for a routing conflict.

well learning was the main objective but not the only desired outcome.

Basically I wanted to set up my own DNS so I can have internal address mappings for machines which don't support netbios.

I was considering setting up DNS on OSX Server but then I couldn't find any instructions to set it up with dhcp, and I wanted to have both on the same server, and thought taking the load off the OSX box was a good Idea, considering it will be busy serving media and video and what not.

The reason the osx box wasn't going to host http as well was (well it is but) mainly due to the fact that the box will be connected to a tv and controlled via vlc server, the osx box will do http but only internal stuff