27 November 2005.
0035 Hrs. U.S. Central time

FM: OilMan6

SUBJECT: Changing over from Dialup to Broadband. Part 1.

In mid December I intend to chang over from Dialup to Broadband.

1. What do I need to know in order to achieve this taask?

2. I know I need a physical firewall.
Do you recommend a particular and model?

3. Do I need any special security software?

4. Concerning downloading music and movies,
Do I need any software?

Thank You.

Awaiting your response.

OilMan6.

Here's some answers for you

1/ I assume that you have already placed an order with a broadband ISP, if not get it placed NOW. Your BB ISP will arrange everything for your connection to your new BB line. Other than that, most computers have the ability to conect to BB, minimum tends to be around a 300Mhz machine. You also need to make sure that your computer has a network card in it for BB connection.
2/ This is where you network card comes into play. Now as regards connection, your BB ISP may supply a BB modem, my advice is keep it in case of emergancy but don't use it. Unless its for Cable in which case you need it.
What you want to get yourself is a BB Gateway Router, this allows easy connection to your BB as well as connection sharing, HARDWARE firewall, and some other funky stuff for good security.
As you haven't mentioned whether you are getting ADSL or CABLE it is difficult to be exact on the model you want but here are a couple of links for different types.
This is for ADSL use (http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=LNKNA043DE&nbs_search=C%3D109%26S%3D1057%26M%3DLNK)
THis is for Cable use (http://uk.insight.com/apps/productpresentation/index.php?product_id=LNKNA01C1J&nbs_search=C%3D109%26S%3D1057%26M%3DLNK)
There are lots of different brands but I think these are excellent and readily available everywhere.
3/ Yes and No as long as you have Anti virus and you use some sort of Anti spyware detection then your fine as the firewall is built in to your router.
Here are a few examples:

Free ANti virus (http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1)
Free ANti spyware (http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html)

4/ Yes you do need software to download music and movies from the net, but as this tends to be copyrighted content and downloading it is illegal I'm not going to tell you which to use.
Just fire up a Google search for "peer to peer" or "P2P" sharing and there are lots of hits. This is a major cause of systems being infected with Viruses and Spyware so beware.

I hope this has given you some stuff to think on, if you need any more help just shout.

As far as free anti-spyware goes I find that Microsoft Antispyware is quite good. Does Spybot prevent spyware getting onto your system like Microsoft does?