This morning we were planning moving furniture around, including moving computers out of the room where they are at the moment. With ASDL coming to Fordham soon, I suspect the answer is going to be a wireless router in that room and use the wireless cards I'd told
the_magician were spare (assuming Emily brings her laptop and doesn't have a PCMCIA wireless card already). Sorry Chris.
(Since it's going to be a bedroom whatevers in that room as router/hub/connection sharing mechanism has to be silent, or at least nearly so. Or I have to get that phone line to somewhere else neatly, maybe with a wired connections up to the attic or something (we can manage a not-neat extension onto the landing as a short-term solution, with just one machine on the modem).)