[Vaskez]

Well I assume the 54Mbps card is 802.11g and not 802.11a. You won't actually get more than around 35Mbps performance out of it anyway, due to the overheads etc. involved. A good free easy to use firewall is ZoneAlarm - the problem with it though is that it doesn't allow control over individual ports. A more advanced but complicated and free firewall is Kerio. Do a search. I'm using Kerio now and I'm happy with it so far - it can even control who's allowed to launch applications, not just network traffic.

Remember: when the two network cards are communicating with each other as far as I know they will both operate at the speed of the lower one so that there is no point getting a 54Mbps one if the other is only 11Mbps.

While WEP adds minor security - it also adds traffic overhead, reducing data throughput, although you prob. won't care since as stated, the bottleneck is the broadband connection. You will only care when transferring files over the wireless connection.

The best form of security is not having a very high transmission range! I'm not sure if your access point will allow transmission power setting, but if it does, set it low and no one can sense your access point outside your house then anyway! This also saves power.

[ 06-16-2004, 05:33 PM: Message edited by: Vaskez ]