Routers.

I've a sneaking suspicion that, for my father, setting up a 'router' involved large amounts of sawdust and some sucking of teeth. For me, it involves large amounts of coffee... and some sucking of teeth.

However - and in the completely groundless belief that someone may actually read this - I can heartily recommend Netgear's RP114 cable modem NAT router (Inmac uk link). Not only because it's small and dashingly blue, and not merely because configuration and even upgrade do not depend on Windows, though all of this is accurate. No - it's a cute piece of kit because of one cunning setting in one cunning web control panel thingy; 'Spoof WAN MAC address as this LAN PC: (then enter a local IP).' Deeply simple and cool way of setting up routing on, for example, NTLWorld cable broadband, here in the UK.

Once I'd found that, it took all of ten seconds to get everything working. Without it, I don't think I could have got NTLWorld up and running - they require one to register a new MAC device by using it to browse to a specific IP address. Which, of course, doesn't work if the thing has no browser.

On Tuesday I will set up broadband for my Dad's LAN (you know broadband's arrived when even your Dad has it, by the way). Unfortunately, he's on ADSL, so we're having to settle for a NetGear DG814. Sadly, this box departs from NetGear's trademark blue. Tsk.