FWIW, in your home, that modem IS a router (99.99% of the time). It has to be unless your computer is the device authenticating to the ISP for the basic connection.

As for "turning off the internet", that can just as easily be done with a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. Use a bot-net to flood the thing with so many appropriatly mal-formed packets (E.G. a continuous stream of SYN packets but never responding to the SYN-ACK packet the router would respond with) it has no reserve capacity to do anything. Turn it back on by stopping the DDoS...

Easy and effective.


--=-- My credo: If it's worth doing, it's worth overdoing - just ask my missus, she'll tell ya laugh --=--
You're only paranoid if you're wrong!