Am trying to setup a small, home network. I have got an old 486 that I am going to use as a gateway, running slackware 8, a sparc 10 running solaris 7 and a laptop running slackware 7.2.

At present I have got the 486 and laptop linked together with a cross-wired patch cable. The 486 is accessing the outside world using a modem. I can ping the two machines, but when I do a netconfig on the laptop, setting the 486 as a gatway, I am unable to access the outside world from the laptop. Its not a DNS issue (i don't think), as I cannot ping the outside world by ip address either.

Probably doing something stupid, but can't work it out.

Am getting a 4-port hub so I can add the sparc, but would like to work out why I can't access the outside world with the current setup.

Any suggestions?

I don't use Slackware, but I believe you'll have to use port forwarding and IP masquerading. Check out www.linuxdoc.com.