I'm looking to upgrade to a hardware firewall for my home office that's running a mix of PCs, Macs and occasionally a virtualized Linux machine or two over a stack of NetGear switches and a LinkSys cable modem. Any suggestions?

In my home office, I placed my router between the cable modem and the rest of the network. I have had the same LinkSys broadband Ethernet router for five or six years and have no complaints. I chose it based on my requirements for controlling ports and settings for multiple computers and IP addresses. My wireless access point is inside the router boundary on the Ethernet.

You will need to review your needs for supporting traffic on particular ports and protocols to narrow the list of candidates from which to make your final selection. Important factors to consider are how you may need to handle inbound traffic, whether multiple computers in your internal network require separate external public-IP addresses, and which security protocols you need to work with.

Visit the Web sites for the products you are considering and look for a vendor whose firmware-update instructions and technical support resources make you most comfortable. Avoid the temptation to buy a used enterprise router off the Web unless it comes with a valid software license giving you access to updates.