I think I've got something
We'll see how stabile it is.
The ActionTec is now running in routed mode to allow my 5 ip addresses past it. I set up its DHCP to dynamically serve 3 of the 5, and statically assigned the main one to the G4's Airport interface. I then put the linksys in the kitchen, turned off its DHCP, selected router mode, connected the uplink port of the lan side to one of the ports on the ActionTec. I now have the G4 with a static ip address reachable over a wireless link. My laptops are grabbing their ips from the DHCP pool (which I would prefer to be not reachable from outside...) over the same wireless network.
I have the PC and G4 talking over ethernet in their own little private idaho. Its a little annoying in that I can't seem to reach the internet from the PC directly and have to download stuff to the G4, then ftp it from the PC, but I'm planning to relegate the PC to just oracle server soon anyhow. So this is actually fine.
What's good - it works. What's not good - everything is hanging out there. I feel like I need a firewall in here or something. Realistically I only want to expose ssh, www, and scp to the world. I've got an old sonicwall soho kicking around here somewhere....
Can I fiddle the DHCP pool to serve addresses that are not routed outside? Aren't addresses in the 10.0.0.x range only routed locally? Something like that?
Networking is clearly a black art and too hard for the average bear. No wonder millions of PCs are hacked every day.
"I believe that many of the systems we build today in Java would be better built in Smalltalk and Gemstone."
-- Martin Fowler, JAOO 2003