M@rkJakes.com

First off, this is for home use only, just a few connections.  If you are looking for a cheap alternative to a Cisco router, you are not in the right place!

The Windows XP network stack is quite capable of low traffic routing.  You can do this with the ICS (Internet connection sharing wizard) but that turns on all sorts of proxying and won't allow you to use your own IP addresses (it fixes the lan address to 192.168.0.1).

My friend Dave, who keeps breaking his server, asked me to set up NAT routing on his box.

Standard Windows XP with two network cards.

We named the one connected to the internet router "WAN" and the local area network interface to "LAN".

After making sure that internet connection sharing was switched off on the WAN interface, open the Control Panel, administrive tools, services.

In the console that follows, switch on 'Routing and remote access" .

Close the Services window and open the registry editor by going to Start > Run… and typing “regedit” without the “ ”. Click OK and in the window expand to the following path: My Computer > HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > SYSTEM > CurrentControlSet > Services > Tcpip > Parameters. Now in the list you will see something like “IPEnableRouter”. Double click on it and turn the value from 0 to 1. Now restart your computer.

You must know the names of your adapters you are using.. In our case, it was WAN for the interface connected to the ADSL

Now we open the command prompt and type the following command to install NAT:

	netsh routing ip nat install

Reboot !!!

Now type the next command to add the public interface:

 

	netsh routing ip nat add interface "WAN" full

And the last command to add the private interface:

 

	netsh routing ip nat add interface "LAN" private

...and the installation is done!