I had thought about flashing a router before, now Jon gave a few ideas as to why.  So now I have a D-Link DIR-601 purchased at a garage sale to experiment with.  So far the experience was good, taking only 10 seconds or less to flash dd-wrt on it.  Looking forward to seeing what it can do.  Thanks for the tip about using a router to connect a printer to the network.  Now to find a router with USB connectivity as my old printer does not have that option.