Wireless router is pretty much the same as a wired router, except with the added benefits of being able to send/receive connections wirelessly.
Mine has 4 ports in it for wired stuff which I currently use for my PCs, as to use my PCs with it wirelessly I'd have to purchase new ethernet cards for them....and those things cost quite a bit for my budget.
As for fees, only fee involved is buying the router itself, and new ethernet/lan cards if you want your PCs to interact with it wirelessly.
The hardware firewall is pretty much dependent on the router, my LinkSys WRT54G has the standard options you'd get like on other routers, like blocking out anonymous packet requests and so forth.
As for slowing the internet down at all, depends if you set it up correctly, because as mentioned above, if you dont set an encryption key (I use a 64bit WEP key on mine, which works with both my DS & PSP), nearby users can just hook-up with it and possibly slow down your bandwidth. Other then that, cant see any problems speed-wise connecting to the internet, unless your connection exceeds the wireless throughput of the router, or there is some wireless inteference from other obstacles
("B" routers do 2mbps I believe, while "G" go up to 54mbps)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.
Mine has 4 ports in it for wired stuff which I currently use for my PCs, as to use my PCs with it wirelessly I'd have to purchase new ethernet cards for them....and those things cost quite a bit for my budget.
As for fees, only fee involved is buying the router itself, and new ethernet/lan cards if you want your PCs to interact with it wirelessly.
The hardware firewall is pretty much dependent on the router, my LinkSys WRT54G has the standard options you'd get like on other routers, like blocking out anonymous packet requests and so forth.
As for slowing the internet down at all, depends if you set it up correctly, because as mentioned above, if you dont set an encryption key (I use a 64bit WEP key on mine, which works with both my DS & PSP), nearby users can just hook-up with it and possibly slow down your bandwidth. Other then that, cant see any problems speed-wise connecting to the internet, unless your connection exceeds the wireless throughput of the router, or there is some wireless inteference from other obstacles
("B" routers do 2mbps I believe, while "G" go up to 54mbps)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong here.