The Net Shell got me thinking.

[Typewriter]

I started poking around in 'netsh' today, just to see what was possible. And some neat commands popped up.

So I started to look around on Google and Microsoft to see if there were any documentation on how to manipulate the network on a Windows XP box, but to my dissapointment, I couldn't really find any usefull information.

So I want to ask you guys and girls in here. Have anyone of you ever tried setting up an XP as a router or even a firewall. Or do you know of anyone who have tried it.

And ofcourse, I am thinking of XP acting like a SOHO router that you could buy in your local computer store, that enables portforwarding and a DHCP solution for your network.

Best regards.

[FAT64]

It would no doubt involve some "jiggery-pokery" with the Registry and maybe a DLL file or two. Is it worth it when a home router costs very little?

[C01eMaN]

yeah i got a adsl2 wireless router off ebay for £9.50 the other day lol why would you want a bloted xp router anyway linux is the way to go for a router?

[bj-kaiser]

get something that is known to be supported by OpenWrt. Gives you what you want, does need less energy than any XP capable hardware and besides, XP was never meant to do any sort of server/router work.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/TableOfHardware

Or try it with m0n0wall

http://m0n0.ch/wall/

Edited March 21, 2007 by bj-kaiser

[Sonic]

Just to confirm OpenWrt rocks ^^ (I use at home : ssh, pptp server, wake on lan, scripting and more ...)

[CoffeeFiend]

Bad idea IMO. Extremely bad choice of OS for the particular task (couldn't really think of anything worse to use really).

It's not a server-oriented OS by any means. NAT? You're not going to hack something around ICS (I hope not at least). Firewall? XP built-in? Eeek. DHCP? God knows. How to manage it? How are you going to make a web interface (and SNMP) to manage configure NAT/DHCP/Firewall and all?

XP just doesn't have what it takes (like no DHCP server, much less VPN stuff and what not).

XP is not configurable enough.

XP is not nearly secure enough for the task.

A "full-blown" OS like XP is way too resource intensive for such a simple task.

XP is too expensive (even XP home at 96$CDN to replace a router, even if hardware was free...)

Using a PC as a router (and nothing else) is wasteful - it'll cost more in electricity in a single year than a decent router like the WRT54GL costs.

Too much maintenance overall (apply windows updates and all that)

Generally speaking so-so uptimes (compared to embedded linux and such)

Would be somewhat of a PITA to use/administrate headless.

At least, if you chose the "let's spend more on electricity per year than a router costs", use something appropriate/meant for it, like m0n0wall, SmoothWall, ipcop or something along those lines.

It's secure, time-tested, reliable, full featured, performs well, is light enough on resources (any old Pentium 1 will do - no need for even a hard drive in many cases), is free and open source, already has all the management interfaces one would expect, has uptimes approaching eternity, is well supported by large user groups and companies and everything else.

My 2 cents: just buy a WRT54GL if all you want is a SOHO router, and use your preferred 3rd party firmware on it. Cheap, easy, reliable, secure, doesn't cost anywhere near as much electricity as any PC, etc.