help! setting up a LAN/Router at home

hello all, and hope all is well.

been away studying hard on CCNA 2.

need advice and help on this project....

thinking about setting up a small LAN and router at home + firewall.

i'm guessing other members in this forum have setup at home - i need to hear your stories because i want to do it right the first time.

all the advice i can get from you guys is very much welcomed. i hoping this will help me pass this course. practical skills is what i need.

advice on equipment, software – anything and everything.

thank you in advance.

Oh yeah, and my budget for this project is £400 – whatever advice you give must fall within this budget.

Is this going to be used to study for a CCNA? If so, I'd suggest looking at Cisco 2500 series routers. You'll really need more than one router to practice routing configurations, I'd say three would be a good number. Firewalls aren't really on the CCNA, you'll just need to know what they are, but that's it. For a firewall I'd suggest buying an older computer for cheap, loading a Linux distro on it, and use iptables, or if you want something a bit simpler, look at IPCop . Dalight is the firewall.cx expert on it, so he can answer most any questions you have about it.