by 7 people |
Sharing Your Internet Connection
The best solution to this kind of problems is to use a router which is capable of QoS (Quality of Service). Basically, this kind of router controls your traffic (it's called "traffic shaping"), prioritizing certain types of it, and making sure everyone gets a "fair share" of bandwidth. Of course, if you are the administrator, you can make your share a bigger one ;)
Find out how you can set up a home network without blowing your budget!
Picking the Best Router For Your Network
Linksys-Cisco WRT54GL Wireless-G Broadband Router (Compatible with Linux)
Powerful little device with wireless data links and 4 Ethernet port switch. Perfect for your home networking needs.
Avg. Customer Rating: 
Amazon Price: Too low to display (as of 11/09/2009) 
Choosing Best Firmware for a WRT54GL Router
- Tomato
- Highly recommended firmware which takes QoS configuration to the next level. When it comes to setting up traffic priorities, Tomato can do almost anything. Great and easy-to-use web interface. Has a built-in bandwidth monitor.
- DD-WRT
- Popular firmware that is based on OpenWRT kernel rather than Linksys software. Has many features, especially useful for wireless users. From my experience, it's QoS doesn't work that well though.
- OpenWRT
- A firmware meant for advanced users, it is said to have one of the best QoS scripts around. It used to have only a command shell, but now some people created X-WRT, a web interface project for OpenWRT.
Configuring the QoS Ruleset of Your Router
Once you have everything you need for your home network, there's only the configuration left to do. Creating and perfecting your QoS ruleset can take you a few minutes to several days, depending on your experience, needs, and the firmware you chose. However a good setup will save you lots of time and nerves in the future.For starters you'll want to give higher priority to programs that suffer from insufficient bandwidth: be it games, voice communication or simple web browsing. Give the lowest priority to file downloads and p2p programs. Most custom firmware (such as Tomato) has L7 filters which allow you to simply choose applications to prioritize from a drop-down list. Alternatively, you can prioritize traffic coming from a specific port or IP adress. For example, to prioritize web browsing you will want to give higher priority to port 80 (http).
That's it - enjoy! If you still get lag, tweak your settings by further reducing priority of bandwidth-hungry aplications until you don't have to worry about slow internet . It's all about how you divide and prioritize the web traffic! Your regular web browsing, for example, doesn't need much bandwidth but requires a high priority; and it's the vice versa for big file downloads.
Check the homepages of the according firmware for more information, or visit the Linksys forums.
Comments
Comments from happy people whom I saved from bandwidth clogging evil flatmates go here:
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Posted October 24, 2009
rincewind wrote
it's said that you can prioritize traffic coming from a specific port, or IP adress. that's not physical port, if you want connect a switch and connect as many computers as you like
Posted July 11, 2009
fendy wrote
it seem can only manage 4 port, how can i manage 20 computers with this router?
Posted June 24, 2009
Mikecha wrote
i have been looking for this, thank you...
i am goona try it
Posted February 14, 2009
Petee wrote...
Good information short and to the point. Now all I need to do is figure out how to back up all computers on the network one desktop one laptop on a WD mybook.
5 star ...
Posted February 01, 2009
Petee wrote...
Good information short and to the point. Now all I need to do is figure out how to back up all computers on the network one desktop one laptop on a WD mybook.
5 star ...
Posted February 01, 2009
Oscar wrote
Excellent explanation =)
Posted October 22, 2008
OldGrampa wrote...
Very interesting. We share an internet connection here at home using a regular router, now I am considering getting one like this to help manage our usage better.
Posted October 08, 2008
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by Chadrew
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