AKICILJ: Wireless router question

At the Escapade raffle, I won exactly the prize I wanted -- a wireless D-Link router. (It helped that not many other people wanted it.)

The documentation appears to date from 2003 (and IE 6.0, which just had its funeral), but everything worked properly and I was able to configure it. And if I had a laptop computer handy, I could probably find my answer empirically instead of asking you, O Internets. But I am currently sans laptop computer, and arkuat is off making nice to other people's cats.

So, what's probably a dumb question. Right now, I have things set up the way they were shown in the router documentation, with the desktop computer connected to the wireless router, and the wireless router connected to the DSL router (aka modem). I prefer not to have everything on my desktop computer go through the wireless router, since I'm not using encryption.

If I switch things so that it's computer --> DSL router --> wireless router, will it work so that the theoretical laptop (and eventually my TiFaux) can still access the Internet, but my desktop machine will have a bit more protection? That's how the previous (very cranky) wireless router was set up, before it bit the dust.

Also, I'm wondering if the wireless router (at 54 Mbps) would be a limiting speed factor with my DSL router.

Also, am I being overly paranoid?