Look under the projects newsgroup and you'll see quite a few articles regarding an ethernet adaptor from a company called siteplayer!

This will be the basic chipset that I'll use to interface various items together!

The idea is to use loads of these little devices to interface the outside world to ethernet via RJ45 then plug them all into a hub that's been converted to run from 12VDC!

No reason why it shouldn't work is there!