Still plugged in to the raw Internet? Here are some $25 routers

For the life of me I still don't understand why people still plug directly in to their cable or DSL modem.  Not only are they exposing themselves to the raw Internet, they're making life miserable by limiting themselves to one PC connectivity at a time and possibly even having to deal with PPPoE DSL dialup configurations.  If this is you, then this is your lucky day.  Our friends at Tomsnetworking have come up with this nice little list of cheap routers in the $25 street price range.

Some of the key benefits of a hardware router is:

• Offload PPPoE dialup configuration.  This means you no longer need to "dial up" to your DSL connection when you want to use it, the router does it for you and every other computer connected.
• Split your cable or DSL connection to multiple PCs.
• Protection from predators on the Internet scanning your port and looking for open vulnerabilities and file shares.
• Easy home networking with the built in DHCP (automatic IP assignment) server.
• Typically a built in 10/100 four port switch

Of course there are much nicer models in the $40 to $80 range with built in Access Points and even nicer features, but everyone should at least have one of these cheap routers as a basic sanity check.