Actually, Mike brings up a good point - unless your interenet provider is faster than 100Mb/s then the best you can do from the 'net to the entire rest of your inside network is 100Mb/s or less.

so a gig switch connected to your firewall/internet router, which has a 100Mb/s link, is probably fast enough.  I assume you want the gigE from machine to machine, so you should budget for a higher-end gigE switch (or router) than for an internet-facing box with multiple gigE.  Or at least consider the speeds, and try to get a gigE switch/router that can give full data rate (full duplex) between all ports at once.

Rusty

-----Original Message-----
From: plug-discuss-bounces@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us on behalf of Michael Butash
Sent: Sat 7/7/2012 2:38 AM
To: plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Subject: Re: Looking for Router Suggestions
 
Check out routerboard:

http://routerboard.com/products

I don't know much about them, but the os seems very versatile

Mikrotik routers seem to have a good community about them, just not sure 
what features the os provides, but seems very versatile, and mentions 
openvpn (I'm thinking endpoint, not hub).

http://wiki.mikrotik.com/wiki/Manual:RouterOS_features

If you really want a router with 2 interfaces for "outside" and 
"inside", you'll have better luck, and just get a gig switch for behind 
it.  Most "routers" really have just two 
(wan=outside,switchports=inside), and just include a small switch 
built-in to get the "5 ports".

-mb