SmallNetBuilder should help; you can use their
finder but really everything under the "Wireless" menu might be helpful. As a start, read the "
How to Buy a Wireless Router" article. It's a couple of years old, but nothing fundamental has changed in the technology -- just new editions of existing product lines.
[*]I see a lot of this "dual band" talk which, from what I have read, means it can send out signals simultaneously on 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequencies to boost performance. I would be using a mix of 802.11g and 802.11n, so would this be beneficial?
Be careful: a lot of WiFi devices claim "dual band" but require you to choose one or another. If you're looking for maximum performance, you want a router that claims
simultaneous dual band, ie two radios so it can operate on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands at the same time. There are some issues with operating in a mixed environment (ie with both g and n clients), but mostly it just works -- the "how to" article I linked to goes into more detail. (To get optimal performance, you really want to segregate the clients into their respective bands if you can, but that's not always possible since range on the 5GHz band isn't as good). Of course when it comes to performance you're often gated by your upstream connection (Verizon or the wider internet) anyway since WiFi speeds are actually petty good for most things. You are conceding some latency with wireless, however.
[*]Currently I have Verizon FIOS using their provided (100Mbps) router. I have the router hooked in via ethernet instead of coax so assuming the router has a WAN port I should be fine right?
As long as you have an ethernet cable going into your PC at the moment, you should be able to just interpose the WiFi router. However, if your broadband modem also includes a router, then you have to decide how you want to deal with IP addresses. By default, both the broadband modem/router and the WiFi router are going to want to hand out IPs, which isn't really a good thing. Since the WiFi router is going to want to hand out IPs to wireless clients (which presumably is why you're buying it) it's usually best to let it do that job for all your clients and turn off DHCP in the Verizon modem/router -- assuming they let you do that (some broadband providers lock down their boxes). This can get a little tricky (bridge mode for the modem, etc) and I haven't personally configured a Verizon FIOS setup so I'll leave it to others to chime in if you can't figure it out on your own.
[*]I'm looking to stay with FIOS for the foreseeable future but unfortunately you need to have the router plugged into the coax to use all that on-demand stuff. This is something I don't have currently (OTA, Netflix and Hulu satisfy my needs), but how should I set up my network/router settings if I have to still use the Verizon router?[/list]
If I understand what you're asking, I think I already covered it: coax into the FIOS modem, ethernet out of it into your WiFi router, and then WiFi or ethernet from there to the clients. Again, the important things is to have only one of those two devices handing out IP addresses (only one acts as an actual router; you set the other to be just a bridge or a dumb switch).