Please what is the purpose of the "net.ipv4.ip_forward" option in /etc/sysctl.conf

# Controls IP packet forwarding
net.ipv4.ip_forward = 0

What it means when enabled and how can be used?

UPDATE:

It seems to enable or disable port forwarding and other forwarding of the traffic possibly.

This is what worked to enable forwarding:
sed -i "s|#net.ipv4.ip_forward=1|net.ipv4.ip_forward= 1|g" /etc/sysctl.conf && sed -i "s|#net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1|net.ipv6.conf.a ll.forwarding=1|g" /etc/sysctl.conf && sysctl -p

To disable, one would add # before the appropriate lines in /etc/sysctl.conf and then do "sysctl -p"