Setting up a PC as a Router?

HardwareExtreme

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Jan 5, 2016
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Ok, I have a networking problem. I have a box with 4 nics installed, and running Windows Server 2003. I am trying to connect 3 computers to the internet through this machine. How can I do this? I tried using a bridge, but this refused to work when 2 of the connections were working at the same time. I also tried NAT, and that seems promising, but I keep getting errors with IP allocation. I have tried setting the first nic as a static IP as well as the others under nat, so that the incoming is 192.168.1.X and the outgoing are 192.168.3.x but I cannot get it to work. Can anyone help, or am I doing this wrong?
 
Solution
the best way to do this for me is get a mikrotik pci card from what I 've experienced it is the best and easiest way to turn a pc to a router
Windows is a pain to get this to work. You will have to us ICS which can be unstable at times.

If you really need to use the PC I would load a linux based router it will have many more features than a microsoft server. The microsoft code is not really designed to do what you want .

Still a $20 router will likely outperform your pc based router.
 

HardwareExtreme

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First of all, Server 2003 won't let me share to more than one nic. I have to go through this because I have one incoming connection from the other end of the house and don't have a router or switch available. It is also serving as a small file server too. I am trying to connect 3 (At Least!) computers through it, but that may increase. It is impractical to run other cables or get Wireless cards.

I tried Lubuntu and Zeroshell, but I think my Lubuntu disk is damaged, or my computer can't handle it. It is a Celeron 2.4GHz (Socket 478) with 512mb of ram and integrated graphics. It has 2 Realtek NICS and 2 Intel NICS. Zeroshell didn't work because I have NO CLUE how to configure it, since I know little about networking. I did get sharing to work in Lubuntu, but then it preceded to break in the middle of an update and started spitting out errors.
 

HardwareExtreme

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This machine is intended to be a router and file server, and I may even add firewall to it at some point. This machine itself is a fileserver, although not a very big one since it only has a 40GB drive dedicated for that. Anyways, would sharing in Lubuntu or Linux Mint XFCE be worth doing? Or is there a way I can share to more than one adapter in Server 2003?
 
How about you do this, just share the internet of the nic that's connected to the router. Connect your other nic to a switch and connect your other computers to a switch. If it's set right windows will automatically assign ips to computers connected to that switch and everything should run just fine. It will be an extra network hop though and setups like that can sometimes have quirks with gaming. Typically the only time I've done something like that is while installing drivers on one or more computers by sharing the wireless on my laptop :p.
 

HardwareExtreme

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I don't have a switch or router available! However, I went and installed Lubuntu 15.10 on it and set up sharing, but I didn't have much time to fool around on it. I tried installing Debian and going custom but I couldn't find a proper network manager, and it wasn't exactly running well. Lubuntu looks like it will be fine, but I still have to figure out how to setup Samba or something similar to create a share.
 

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