Pls IT guys in the house, My friend told me he uses one of his computers as a router .How can I go about this.I need help on this please.

u did call him your friend, so he cud help ya out. i havent heard anything like that so you could get the info and educate us, we wuld really appreciate dat. chao!

@Poster

You heard right. Your computer could definitely be use as a router. How  you achieve this depends on your routing requirements. In the very simplest form, your computer might already be working as a router (an internet router) if you have ICS enabled to share your internet connection with other computers on the LAN.

However in the more traidtional router sense, you would need a minimum of two NICs, (more depending of the number of networks this computer would be directly connected to) and you'll need to run Windows 2000, 2003 server or a linux flavour (installed in the server mode). All these OS enables you to configure the traditional routing protocols (RIP, OSPF and not forgetting statis routes) to get packets from your source networks to destination networks. The routing components of windows server is RRAS (Routing and Remote Access service).

I am unable to give a blanket installation scenario here and your set up would depend on your requirements (which i'll be happy to expand upon if i know your routing requirements). Regards

Windows Server operating system (2000/2003) can do the job. i.e RRAS(Routing and Remote Access Service). Then remember that ur system must be a multi-homed (i.e two NICs). that's the only thing i can think of.

Two thumbs up for Internet Connection Sharing.

sakin4life, Thanks for ur responce.Must it be done on win 2000.Why not XP or even Linux

@Poster

paribus and sakin4life have said just about everything.
Its very possible to run a PC as a router. On Windows, the server OSes would do this. In addition, you should know that software implementation of routing has its relative advantages and disadvantages when compared to the hardware routers. For instance, dedicated hadrware routers are faster because the software routers would still have the process overhead of the OS.

Taking Microsoft Windows Server 2003, when feasible, deploying Windows Server 2003 as routers allows for some distinct advantages over dedicated hardware routers, including lower cost, ease of management, and integration with Windows security and group policies. Meaning, you get features like routing based on user account(hardware routers don't have this feature), access windows/time, and a lot more.

The choice of either is based on your own requirements.

uselo:

Must it be done on win 2000.Why not XP or even Linux

I know it can be done on Windows 2000 and 2003 without any additional 3rd party software. Though I have never tried it out, but there are 3rd party softwares you can get to give windows XP the routing capability. As for the configuration on Linux, I don't know much about that.

Cheers

u can activate ip routing on ur windows xp by registry editing by following the ff steps
Open up the Registry editor by clicking Start - Run and type regedit
Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters . Here you'll have to change the value of 'IPEnableRouter' from 0 to 1. (If there is no such element, select Edit|New|doubleword value or DWORD value. Enter the name 'IPEnableRouter' (without quotes, take care for capital letters) and a single 1 in the value field.) Reboot your machine to apply the settings.Post ur results.

plz BACKUP YOUR REGISTRY before trying this

@Dave
telling people to tamper with their registry without warning them of the consequences of editing the registry and asking them to backup is unsafe.
Cheers.

A computer's a computer and a router's a router.
A computer can only be a gateway not a router.

@tope,

dont say that. A computer can act as a router. I converted my ex-system into a router and firewall for the systems I have in my house. I used bsd on it before but changed it into the red hat 9.2 when i converted my main system into a unix server. Just as said, software approach has its advantages and disadvantages when compared to the hardware approach but i think i still prefer the earlier cos i could tune the routing and firewall levels to my taste. I could have the system trace back an attack to someone who is even under the cover of a proxy, but dont let us get down too much here, @poster, it is very very and 100% possible just need to take your time to set it up. Shikena.

Wysiwyg, how come i neva thought of that.

@tope, It probably skipped your mind. Anyways, One love.

One luv lol.

PLEASE I NEED A ROUTER THAT CAN TRAVEL UP TO 1000 METERS RANGE RADIUS ,, 2.4GHZ

OR HOW CAN A ROUTER TO REACH A DISTANCE OF 1000METERS,,
PLEASE I NEED HELP

IF YOU DO HAVE ANY IN MIND,, PLEASE REFER ME