[tombrossman]

That's a good point and I don't know the answer.

I have a gigabit fiber (to the home) connection which terminates at a device with 4 Ethernet jacks. They all work, I've tested connecting directly to them with a laptop, but I plug a router into it and all devices connect through that router instead. It's the 'stateful firewall' aspect of using a router that I want for improved security. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateful_firewall