>I have two computers at home on a win2000 peer to peer network.
>Can I set up a third computer with Linux and a modem to use as a firewall to connect both win2000 computers to the web?
>
>TIA

Yes. Check out this link: http://lrp.steinkuehler.net. I used this system with no prior experience in Linux and got it going with no problems.

There are many upsides, no downsides:
1. The firewall can run on a 486. I myself have it running on a P90 w/32Meg of RAM.

2. No HDD or CD required. The entire bootable Linux system runs from a floppy. Once you get it the way you want it, you write-protect the floppy. Now, even if a cracker got onto the actual firewall box, there is simply no possible way for them to physically commit any changes to your system. If a cracker did get in and munge your firewall, just reboot and presto! back to the way it should be.

3. Various dial-up protocols are well-supported, though I use two ethernet cards for my DSL.

4. It is out-of-the box a firewall.

5. It supports masquerading out-of-the-box, so your two Win2k machines will be able to use the WWW.

6. By changing a few well-documented scripts, you can enable "port forwarding", which allows one of the Win2k machines to be a web server and still be reachable from behind the firewall. though if you are using dial-up, you may have no need for this. I do this to allow a Win2k machine that is behind the firewall to be a web server, and another Linux box behind the firewall to be my mail server.

7. Set your Win2k machines up to be DHCP clients and you are in business. They do not know or care that your firewall is not Windows.

Hope this helps, good luck!