I've been reading about linux security, and apparently the best way is to have a box acting as an interface running nothing at all except internet connection stuff, so that everything on the internal network is hidden behind it.

Jenny You might like to check out Freesco - a router/firewall/dns server/etc linux distro on a single floppy disk. There are others which are similar but Freesco seems to be one of the most complete and simplest to set up. It has spawned an entire sub-culture of add-on program with people using the distro for many other tasks such as mp3 server, web server etc. Once installed it can be administered via ssh to get to the command line or a web browser to the control panel.

I have it on a massively over-powered machine - a 50mhz 486 with 16 megs of ram and a hard-drive and it works very well although AFAIK it can be used with a 386, 8 megs ram and no harddrive.

If you are interested in trying it out I have another old 486 in the shed - may need some memory though.

Regards Syd