Quote Originally Posted by b.line
.... As it turns out, two worms (Blaster and Nachi) apparently work together to hide, reinfect and propogate across the web. ...

I have several computers but have not fooled with networking since Novell was a miracle...
I too worked with Netware, worked for a vendor even back to the days of arcnet and big 20 meg file servers that took all night to format. Yes, things have changed. As to that router and those worms: I absolutely would not operate a computer on the Internet without a router acting as a firewall. Even have a spare router in my travel bag in case I want to plug in somewhere that I don't trust. Besides providing the backbone for a network, a router provides the very important function of blocking worms from reaching your system. Of course, a router will not protect you if you do stupid things, like download "key generators" from warez sites and run them on an unprotected system, or read mail with Outlook, but if you are reasonably cautious you can operate safely on the Internet and your biggest threat to your data will remain Microsoft itself, not lesser malware that a cheap router with a NAT firewall would block.