I currently have a 1751 acting as our main gateway. At the moment it has two WIC-T1 cards, multi-interfaced.

Now, we're doing away with our 2xT1 for a 10MB fiber link. The fiber will be terminated and delivered to our equipment via the standard RJ-45. So, that's why I'm looking to get the WIC-4ESW since I'll need another port on our 1751 to terminate the connection to the fiber.

I've never used a WIC-4ESW, or anything of the sort to add more Ethernet ports to a router. My intentions are to use one of the four ports on this card as the link to our WAN. So, it'll have a private IP assigned to it. Even though it's an addon module, I can still assign an IP address to each port on it right?

Second question, I read a few posts online, and that beings this card is a layer 3 device, that I can't expect it to run at a 10MB level even though it's a 10/100MB link because of the routers processor. Is this correct? Should I be looking at something else instead of this four port card for terminating a high-speed WAN connection?