> 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). > > while you still have connectivity to the router do exactly the following steps. A) set the linksys's internet/WAN IP address to a 'safe' static IP, lets use 192.168.250.250 ... we'll never use this address. don't plug anything into the WAN port. B) disable the DHCP and DNS service on the router, and configure the linksys LAN IP address to something unused on your 'new' LAN, like 192.168.0.250 ... you will use this to access the linksys configuration web page. C) setup your new 'nix gateway to talk to your ISP (static, dhcp, or PPPoE, depending on the ISP configuration), and the 2nd ethernet as LAN address 192.168.0.1, with a dhcp server dishing out a reasonable IP range like 192.168.0.100-200. Also setup a DNS forwarder on the 'nix gateway, and set 192.168.0.1 as the DNS address returned by the DHCP zone option for DNS. your clients will use 192.168.0.1 as their gateway and DNS, with network mask 255.255.255.0 if you have hosts with static IP's you can use any IPs between 192.168.0.2 and 192.168.0.99, also 192.168.0.201-254 not counting 250 that we used for the linksys. D) plug a linksys LAN port into your 'nix gateway, and plug a PC into another LAN port on the linksys, and see if its all working. you should be able to raise the linksys config pages as http://192.168.0.250 if you used the addresses I gave above.