Well, it's 5:40am on Saturday. I've discovered that alcohol (in moderation) is the perfect sleep inducer for me--I sleep like a rock for a few hours, and wake up wide awake (which never happens usually). But when you go to bed at 9:30pm (hey, I was tipsy after dinner, and feeling really tired! :) ), that few hours puts you up at 2:30 in the morning.

So, why not blog?

Routing in XP. It's still pretty simple to turn on, although not as easy as it was in NT 4 (check "Enable Routing"). There's a registry update necessary. You can find it pretty much anywhere on the net, including here:

Stupid little note: Changing the registry is dangerous stuff. I've heard of people losing limbs. Sprouting a second head is a very real possibility. You've been warned--anything you do on your computer, to yourself, or to others, is none of my business nor my fault.

Open Regedit, and find the following key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\Tcpip\Parameters

If it's not there already, create a new DWORD value named "IPEnableRouter". Set it's value to 1. Thankfully "1" is the same in decimal and in hex, so you don't have to worry about which one it's set to.

After that, reboot. That's all there is to it.

Just remember, though--routing is useless unless you've got two IP addresses to route between. They can be on the same card. Yes, there are occasions where that's actually needed--like in an IP range conversion. Been there, done that. The addresses can also be on different cards, or, better yet, one can be a VPN connection. Wow, I might have a use for that... :)