Advice on internet security

Hi, I was wondering if you guys could given me some advice on protecting one of my computers.

For years, I've been running this setup

DSL ---> Router ---> rest of network. so I felt safer being behind the router.

I'm moving to an area that dialup only, so I'm switching to EV-DO internet.
It's going to be setup like this.

EV-DO modem -->computer running XP and ICS ---> Router with NAT, but DHCP disabled ---> rest of network.

Now there is this one computer that is exposed in front of the router. Any tips on securring that one would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Put linux on it. Never done dialup with linux, but I'm sure it can be done.

Also, I would set a static on the ICS <-> router, and have NAT and DHCP (or make it static) on the other side of the router.

Yeah, I thought of linux, but there are no drivers for my EVDO card in linux. It's not actually dialup. Think of it as high speed cell phone internet.

As for your other suggestion of running the DHCP on the router instead of the PC, are there any advantages?

Thanks

Ah I see, wasn't sure on that one but now I know.

Seems to me that all LAN management behind the router should stay that way. If you call DHCP across NAT to the border PC, then if your border PC goes down, so does your network. On the other hand, if you static (or DHCP) your LAN behind the router, then if the border PC goes down, you're only left with one problem.

Obviously if your router went down, you would have other problems independent of DHCP, so that is not an issue for this IMO.

That makes sense. If I lose my first PC, then my network remains intact, I just don't have access to the internet. Currently, if my first PC goes down, I lose everything.

Exactly. When DHCP servers go down, everyone is unhappy within a matter of minutes

smoothwall I believe has support for dialup. I think this would be a much better solution then XP running ICS. Smoothwall is more robust, you don't have to worry about buying another copy of XP, I also believe it's more secure then XP since it was designed as a firewall while XP was not.

Edit: Sorry didn't see the thing about the EVDO card until after I had posted this.