Arduino Ethernet Shield Question

I'm looking for a way to send an receive data from my Arduino Duemilanove via ethernet. I just found the ethernet shield. I have a program that waits for an command and then runs the program and finally returns some data. Right now I'm using the USB connection right now, can I use the ethernet shield to do this?

I need to use Ethernet because it needs to be controlled wirelessly on a linux computer. I could use a usb device server, but I can't find one that is compatible with linux and they cost about $100 (twice that of the Ethernet shield).

Wirelessly over what range?

I am going to have the Arduino Ethernet Shield connected to a wireless router in a bridged mode. This way I'll be able to access it from any place on the internal network.

I'm thinking I could setup a simple html page that will appear when I access the Arduino IP address with 5 buttons (there a 5 commands I can send to the Arduino for my program). Then when a button is pressed I will print out the output on the web page in a text box. I will code a simple python program to access the Arduino's web page and interact with the page. Does this seem like a good solution to what I'm looking to do?

Below is some tinkering I've done with an arduino ethernet shield and a wireless router that may have some useful info.

http://www.lynxmotion.net/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=6343