Have a new house router from Verizon

Well, Verizon sent me a new ActionTec MI424-WR Rev F router without me asking.  Their take was that my previous router (which I don't use at all any more) needed to be upgraded to take advantage of their new capabilities.  I read it as "we can control our routers so we can snoop on what you are doing."  The ActionTec router has some nice capabilities but with a 4 year old kernel (possible security problem here).  The only thing it can do outside of what my current setup can do is that the MOCA connection is built into the router and is version 1.1 (my current MOCA gateway is version 1.0) giving it both a WAN and LAN capability.  I was just about to toss it aside when I noticed that I can configure the ports for VLAN access and that has some merit with what I am trying to do.  I therefore have been busily modifying the network layout to accomodate the new ActionTec and at the same time do what I want to do with one and only one managed switch.  I don't know, maybe it would make life simpler if I had two managed switches here.  By making some connection changes I am able to free up some lines on the managed switch and still do what I want.  I think that I will try it with the ActionTec in the large bedroom downstairs and trunk it back to the managed switch from the router.  That will enable me to designate a couple of the ports for other things.  My only issue at this point is that I need to get the coax from one side of the wall to the other in order to accommodate the changes.  I think that I also might do something with my current Buffalo router that will give me extra capability to route traffic around the network since it is able to work with tagged vlans.  More later.

-- LW