I answered a question recently from someone who wondered whether a router was necessary with a cable Internet connection.

No if’s, and’s or but’s, I recommend a router for any cable or dsl connection.

Whether you intend to have multiple computers connected or not, the router will give you another layer of security. Most significantly, the router will actually gives your computer a “non-routable IP address”. The router isolates anything on the local area network (LAN) side of the router from the Internet (the Wide Area Network - WAN)

This isolation, and the “Network Address Translation” that the router does for your computers, means that you can access computers on the Internet, but no computer on the Internet side of the router can touch yours. All they can do is…

Read the full article