Well, first off, I still miss my Alcatel 1000. I got it when I got my first broadband connection in '98 or so. That thing was rock solid and never lost sync once until it lost sync permanently in 2004 and went to silicon heaven.

I'd start by buying a gigabit switch, and a dd-wrt compatible router. I just ordered 5 Buffalo WHR-G54S, but I havn't gotten to play when them yet, so I can't reccomend them. The most interesting router I came accross was the dd/open-wrt supported Asus model with the built in USB ports, allowing for either USB drive sharing, or USB audio streaming (audio is very beta from what I could tell, but still neat.

Matthew