The Design of an Embedded System Based on ARM Microprocessor and Implementation of an IP-sharer with IPtables of Linux

Along with the rapid development of the networking, the number of small company and home office networks are on the increase. A small router which also called SOHO(small office home office) router or IP-sharer becomes the focus of network, because it can share one IP address among some computers in a home network or a small company LAN(local area network) and enable every host to surf the Internet efficiently and cheaply. In the first part of this article, the operating principle of the IP-sharer was described, then several procedures must be done correctly to set up an SOHO router based on the Linux IPmasquerade. First, setting up the hardware platform; second, also the most important and difficult work is to set up the software which mainly concerning the configuration of uClinux for an IP-share; third, after configuring and compiling the kernel of uClinux, downloading the image of uClinux kernel to the hardware platform; finally, the whole system can be tested.