Thanks everyone. "Firewall" was the term I was having trouble coming up with. Now I'm overwhelmed with all the choices. I think, for someone as "green" (as in "inexperienced") as I am, something like IPCop might be an easy place to start. I'll experiment with a Pentium III I have, but will probably work towards some kind of fanless,, small computer (as suggested by another poster). I'm not sure the BSD firewalls will work for me (at this point) because I've got a couple Linux add-ins I'm thinking of using. Just to confirm. The Linksys wireless router can become a wireless switch with the firewall and router capabilities disabled. (This is a Linux version, BTW, so I'm also going to look into the firmware modifications, but I doubt I can load my programs there and am a little nervous about bricking the router). Again, thanks. -- RonB -- Using CentOS 5.5