Hey, Ray!
I use Earthlink cable as my service provide. I have no idea what your second question is about! I do have a router that I bought myself connected to my cable modem, as an extra level of protection. I also have SpyBot and run it about once a week, Better Privacy, and run a Kaspersky scan also about once a week. So far, the SpyBot hasn’t found any invader nor has Kaspersky.
I have to ask this: are your computers connected to a router, and the router provides the "boot" information to get into your Internet connection? I use an EarthLink-provided Cisco/LinkSys WRT54G2 V1.5 router pre-configured for EarthLink and once I let my two machines connected to the router (mine running Windows Vista Home Premium SP3 and my stepdad's running Windows 7 Home Premium) automatically detect the IP and DNS address, I never have any problems switching between web sites.
