MS>> and here's what i found when i began looking for a perfect
 MS>> router: most major brands have a model with at least one
 MS>> ~RS-232~ Serial-Port besides the ~EtherNet~ outlets, euh...
 MS>> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ 8-o

 TC> I have a LinkSys BEFSR-41 4-port Router and it does not have
 TC> any RS-232 ports on it. I can't speak for other routers but
 TC> your findings do surprise me, as I would expect these days
 TC> everything was all WAN/LAN style connectors, even to connect
 TC> two computers together. Seems IIRC, WAN/LAN was a higher
 TC> transfer rate than what RS-232 could accomplish.

the good routers have a serial port for "out of band"
communications... this is so that you can get into them for configuration
and such without coming in over the LAN and possibly exposing your setup
and passwords and such... in remote sites, one can hook a modem up to the
port instead of a WYSE50 terminal (for instance) and dial in to the router
for performing work on the router settings... your linksys likely uses http
and your browser for configuration... that means that it has, for one
thing, a web server it in, however small and dedicated it (the server)
is...

)\/(ark