Originally posted here by wyverspur
I have had similar problems with network with XP in general, I was able to avoid prroblems if I was extremely careful not to invoke any of the new network wizards, I finally got fed up and went back to 2000 for my main desktop and have been happy ever since.

You could get yourself a good NAT router and just be done with it, its what I use and have no complaints save for the inability to host games on my linux server for friends on-line and connect to it myself.
Most NAT routers have an option called "Port Forwarding" that you can use to forward packets to servers on your internal LAN. This will let you provide services though the router