Sharing your internet connection easily
If you are sharing your internet connection, or plan to, you will probably run out into some problems. There's always this annoying roommate who uses up all bandwidth to download porn using p2p, or a neighbor who browses streaming video sites like Youtube, causing you to lag out in your favorite game or making you unable to chat properly in Skype.
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 ;)
Now find out how you can set up a perfectly working 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: $64.99 (as of 07/26/2008)
Choosing the best firmware for 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 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, it 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 less priority to file downloads and p2p programs. Most custom firmware has L7 filters, and simply lets you choose applications to prioritize from a list. Alternatively, you can prioritize traffic coming from a specific port, or IP adress.
That's it - enjoy! If you still get lag, tweak your settings until you don't have to worry about slow internet as well. 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 file downloads.
For more information, check homepages of according firmware, or visit the Linksys forums.
