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Vista - Turning my Vista box into a router

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Old 08-27-2009   #1 (permalink)


Vista Ultimate x64
 
 

Turning my Vista box into a router

I've been trying, recently, to turn my Vista box into a router for my home network.

My network setup is currently as follows:
WAN -> Vista box (with two NICs) -> switch -> wireless AP and other clients

What I am trying to do, basically, is setup my vista box to act as a router with NAT/firewall (DHCP server not really necessary, since I would like to set a manual IP for most devices anyway). Currently, I have set this up using ICS for NAT/routing and ESET Smart Security for the firewall (I've always liked NOD32 in general, so I figured I'd give their firewall a shot).

I have encountered several problems with this approach:
  1. ICS is incredibly cumbersome in its simplicity. Why can't I, for example, forward a RANGE of ports instead of just one? Why can't I choose what range of IPs the DHCP server should allocate? etc...
  2. The firewall component of ESET Smart Security feels needlessly complex, and does not seem to work very well together with ICS (initially had some problems with convincing it to let through traffic that came from the internal network). This part basically works, but is not really what I want.
  3. My PS3 and PSP has been complaining that my "router does not seem to support IP fragments", which I assume is ICS's fault (turning off the firewall has no effect). I have not, however, had time to explore whether this has any effect on gameplay (the error message states it might interfere with voice communication).
I feel that I could achieve this with just a few terminal commands in any Linux distro, yet I struggle to find the equivalent for Vista. For example, why isn't there any equivalent to iptables for Windows? All I want is to set some simple god damn port blocking rules (and I do NOT want it to constantly pester me with whether or not I should block this or that connection - I'm looking at you Windows Firewall).

The reason why I use Vista and not a more fitting server OS on this computer is simply because it is my main gaming rig.

While I could go out and buy a router, it irks me to no end that I cannot delegate this relatively simple task to my monster rig. So, any advice on how I should go about this?

My System SpecsSystem Spec
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