well I decided to go Ethernet (and I know nothing) - it was easy.
so this is what I have.
dsl from phone line to dsl modem
from there to a cheap linksys router 4 port (70 bucks when I got it last week)
from there to a cheap 10/100 4 port auto sense switch (40 bucks, noisy fan)
plugged into that I have a win98, a winXP and the riocar (2.0.11beta, no hijack yet)

the router does the DHCP and NAT thingies (right out of the box, remember I know nothing about networks)

so I fired up the machine that had emplode on it and told it to use the network, not the USB. it takes a little longer to find the riocar but works perfectly. then I installed emplode on my other computer and was very happy to find that it worked there too. this is just too good.

I'm really no pro, very very green at this. but for all of you that might be wanting Ethernet to your riocar and have not because it looks yukky....give it a shot.
I used all the defaults. I just worked. I got lucky.

however- if you have kids....
just to mess with me after I told my kids how happy I was, my 12 year old daughter unplugged the dsl modem from the wall just to show me I 'wasn't all that'.
only took me 20 minutes to figure it out.