Greeting Gurus, I have an old HP laptop running Win 2k and generic desktop on Xp Pro and would like to have internet access on both at the same time if not too expensive. I'm also hoping the Router will reduce intrusions. Do I need a particular type of router to achieve this, and can you recommend a suitable router at a reasonable cost. I'm in Qld Australia BTW. Thanks for any responses in advance, great people on this site. Avagoodweekend......

Visit this site and check out the router reviews: http://www.ozcableguy.com/ Questions to ask yourself: What type of internet connection do I have? Cable, ADSL or dialup? Do I want wired or wireless connection to the router? Do I have a printer that I want to network? I personally use a Dlink DI 624+ Purchased via ebay for about aud$70. Has 4 port switch plus wireless 54g capability. I have previously used a Netgear FWG114P with similar functionality but including a network printserver. Retail price of that is over $170 but I paid about 1/2 that for a "refurbed" one via ebay. It developed problems after about a year so I switched to the dlink and made other arrangements for a printserver. Prices for a basic SOHO wired router have come down a lot. If you are in southeast QLD I can recommend a store called Gamedude.(for components/peripherals) Lowest price in town on the things they stock. I used to have a signature but it disappeared and I just couldn't be bothered writing another so please feel free to ingore this.

I have a 2 year old D-Link DI 604, 4 port SOHO router that I used for the last two years. It worked quite well for me and I only got rid of it when I upgraded my DSL to a faster package and had to upgrade to a modem/router/firewall/wireless AP device provided by my ISP. The D-Link cost me around $40.00 (CDN) and is not wireless capable. If you have a network capable printer, you don't require anything special for it. Just configure it with an IP address/subnet mask in the same range as the rest of your equipment and plug it in. If it's not network capable, you don't really need to spend extra money on a separate print server or print server capable router since you can plug it into any PC and share it. The only downside to that is having to leave the PC running to print. From my point of view, that's not a down side since I never shut my PC's off anyhow. But in the end, it's moot anyhow since I have a network capable laserjet printer..... If it were me, I'd go with either a D-Link or Linksys brand. I've worked on/with a couple other brands but didn't like them as much and had way too many problems with them. My personal favorite is D-Link.

Thank you Richard59 and CurtR for the advice, I'm on DSL and wondering if any router will act a bit like a firewall. Avagoodweekend......

Most SOHO router's do include a firewall. Just check the specifications on it before buying to be sure.

Any of these routers must share a public IP address between multiple computers with private IP addresses, so they must use NAT, or Network Address Translation. NAT, while technically not a firewall (this is by a technicality according to the definition of a firewall), ends up providing you protection because due to how NAT works, it must deny incoming traffic that didn't originate from a connection initiated from one of your computers unless you "open a port". This is technically called "port forwarding", which is a rule that says, "if something comes in on this port, forward it to this particular computer." Some SOHO routers also have additional protections beyond this, most commonly Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI), which technically makes the SOHO router a true firewall, but the important thing is the above behavior concerning NAT. That is the most important security advantage you gain from these SOHO routers. The rest are just icing on the cake, and you shouldn't necessarily feel vulnerable without them. What you do want to ensure is whatever router you choose, unless you absolutely have to keep it on, you want to disable in the router Universal Plug and Play. This technology is intended to allow applications on your computer to easily open ports in your router. The problem is there's nothing in UPnP that prevents hackers or malware from doing the same thing behind your back. You also want to change the default password for the router. Javascripts embedded in web pages and other malware have been discovered that attempt to log into common routers using their default passwords to open ports behind your back as well. Finally, if you go with a router that provides wireless capability, disable wifi if you don't need it. If you are going to use wifi, make absolutely sure you choose something that supports WPA encryption, and configure it for this. TECH-NO-LOGICAL ROMANCE! http://www.homestarrunner.com/tgs12...