I was wondering is it possible to have the serial port emulate a network card and then use the serial to rj45 adpater to plug it into a router? I want to do this with a netbsd handheld. I do have dd-wrt micro on a belkin router but i want a client side solution so i can connect to other ethernet ports, like around school. I saw some of these adpaters that do just this but are pretty pricely (might as well buy a network card) i picked up a "passive" one for only 2 bucks and figure i can get it to translate on the pda end. Please let me know if you have heard of anything like this.

I very much doubt that you'll be able to do anything about this. Serial protocol and ethernet protocol are different on the lowest layer (e.g. different current levels, etc.) so hardly any software/os sulution would work.

What you saw were special kind of routers. They are sawdered differently. I would check the manual of you router to find out if your router supports something like this. If it doesn't - then you can't use com port to connect to router.

Serial to usb might be another option.

Lazlow