network traffic shaping. gaming with a shared connection

[jamena]

Current Scenario:

Telewest modem
--
netgear 624 firewall/router/switch
--
1 cat5 user and 5 or 6 wireless (11b/g) users

A certain amount of downloading and filesharing goes on frmo the wireless clients and this seems to seriously impact on my (wired cat5 to router) game pings. I see the ping jump from 30/60 up to 400-1500 with heavy packet loss. I've read about using a linux box as a traffic shaper and firewall but I'm not sure I can make the netgear act as simply a wireless-capable switch?

Any suggestions would be appreciated

[Moby-Dick]

you coudl just use your netgear kit as a combined access point & switch , but you might have some fun an games with the DHCP setup.

[jamena]

yeah, I've tried using a linksys modem/router/switch as just a switch/AP and although I occasionally managed to make it work the only way to alter settings on the linksys box was then to reset it to defaults...

I don't suppose anyone knows of a custom firmware for netgear 624 routers?

alternatively, has anyone tried using a distributed traffic shaping program - the sort where you install a small application on every pc in the house and these negotiate for bandwidth? I think that it's largely down to the wireless useage being allocated large continuous segments of time which, of course, destroys a gaming ping (which doesn't need much bandwidth, but it probably UDP and requires about 10 packet slots, evenly spread, each second, to keep your ping in the the 100 region. I'd be happy with a 150 ping when others access the network as long as it was consistent. It's the switching between 40ms and 1000ms that is unplayable...

[Moby-Dick]

no I havnt' but they sound interesting. If you disable the wan interface of the netgear kit + either disable DHCP or set it to use your linux box as a gateway.

Netlimiter is one of the more common host based traffic liming apps , but traffic limiting isn't what you actually need , its the Qos / Cos stuff that is more important.