Heh.

. . . and like that,

I’d succeeded.

Turns out that if you use the IP address of your default route in the"ip route" statement, instead of the interface name (like “Ethernet0/0”), it cuts WAY down on the arp requests, and it makes it so the router functions properly. You also get to turn off proxy-arp requests, which (what with all the viruses these days that replicate thousands of times a second) cuts your memory usage by 2/3 or more.

So hooray for me. Now I just need to finish my 3 other projects.