I saved a few hundred dollars by avoiding purchasing additional services from my broadband provider by connecting multiple computers to one Internet connection. With the purchase and installation of an additional NIC, my Windows 2000 server was ready to become a software-based router.

The entire journey to this goal was difficult. I really can't remember what I did to get it to work but at least I remember where the miserable journey started. First I realized that my broadband provider might be clever enough to figure out that I wanted to connect to their network with a "real" router and charge me more per month. With that in mind, I discovered the following article, "Using Windows 2000 as a Home or Small Business Gateway," at:

http://www.microsoft.com/serviceproviders/
    columns/windows_2000_home_office_gateway.asp

This showed me that what I was trying to do was install Routing and Remote Access. This topic is covered generously in the Windows Help documents, namely "Deploying network address translation" at:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/
    en/server/help/sag_rras-ch3_06d.htm

I hope I never have to refer to this document within the context of trying to set up RRAS again. Networking has never been my strong suit.