I've seen a couple of nice tutorials on setting up Linux as a router (something I want to do at home) but they just go into the basics of how to set it up and not much else (plus it's all text interface stuff).

The setup I will have is...

Internet - Virgin Modem - Linux Router - Netgear Wireless Router ~~~ PCs

I can get it to the point where it will work but I would like to add more monitoring and shaping functionality to it. i.e. givin QoS priority to certain services or balancing the loads when more than 1 PC is contending for the full 10 meg bandwidth etc...

Hmm... is it even possible to manage incoming traffic?!

My main aim is to be able to let everyone use the internet without having people hog the bandwidth and stop everyone else using the internet.

Last night one of my housemates was watching something on iPlayer and I couldn't even browse the internet. Google was taking 30+ seconds to open and on speedtest.net (when it finally loaded) I had a 300k d/l speed (although still had a 10m/s ping) and the upload speed was around 50-100k.

In the end I gave up and read a book. The internet account is mine and everyone pays their share so I can't really stop people from watching stuff (I do it all the time) but I want to get something to sort it out.

If I could have throttled his connection to 5meg then I would have had 5meg of my own to browse the internet and iplayer would have still worked fine (maybe on a lower resolution).

Hope that someone can point me in the right direction.

Thanks.

P.S. I already have the hardware needed I just don't know which distro/software to use.

Smoothwall may well do what you want. Certainly worth a look. And they've a fairly active forum where you may be able to ask specifics.

Ooh!

Good shout!

Looks like it's exactly what I need.

Smoothwall is good (& you can run it from a CF card to save on leccy)

Does that work from SD card also?!

Would be awesome if it did!

With the right adaptor (or a mobo that boots from usb) I'm sure it would.
CF adaptors connect to IDE so they turn in to mini HDD's