Two DSL questions

I’ve had DSL for a couple of months now and I have 2 questions that have to do with my IP address.

When I do an IPCONFIG/ALL, I see that my address is 10.0.0.something. I understand that this means that I have a private address and must be behind some sort of NAT device from my ISP.

  1. Do I still need a firewall? I’m running Zone Alarm but I wonder if it’s really necessary. It tends to interfere when I connect to my company’s VPN.

  2. Will I be able to use wireless router with a private address so that I can run my laptop in my bedroom. My modem is in the living room.

Any answers or suggestions (hardware included) would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Kevin

  1. Probably not, but we’d need to know what kind of hardware you have to be certain.

  2. Yes, but if your modem is one of those “modem\router” thingies, you might have to put the wireless bit on a different subnet to play nice with the modem\router. This will have sharing stuff on your home network a bit difficult. This is why we need to know what kind of hardware you’ve got. Let us know.

Rex Fenestrarum, my modem is a Westell WireSpeed B90 “DSL Modem”. That’s about all that it says. (Descriptive, huh?) It’s the one that the phone company gave me when they installed the DSL so I doubt that it’s anything more than a barebones modem. My desktop is an older Compaq computer running XP Pro. The network card is a Compaq NC3161. My laptop is a Dell running 2000 with a 3com 10/100 mini PCI Ethernet Adapter. (I think that the NICs are TMI, but just in case.)

Anything else?

Thanks,
Kevin