Obviously a large home to you is quite different than a large home to me. I can't
use a wireless router my main house is too big.

"Mike S." wrote:

> Amateur though I am, I've become the default manager for internet access
> in our large home. The hardware consists of a cable modem and older model
> WRT54G with updated firmware. All but my own PC (which connected via the
> local ethernet port on the router) are using wireless. This has worked
> quite well until the two college-age folks in the house started getting
> heavy into P2P (Limewire and Sharezaa). This has had a noticeable performance
> impact on net access, and I'd like to try to improve things.
>
> I am not in a position to prohibit these kids from using P2P, and polite
> efforts to get them to limit the number of connections, and to postpone
> heavy transfers to off-hours has not worked for very long. I understand
> that various port blocking rules within the router are largely ineffective
> because the P2P clients use port-hopping, and can even use port 80 if
> notinh else works. I was wondering if a more sophisticated hardware solution
> might help us.
>
> My first understanding is that the limited CPU power and RAM in an
> inexpensive router get overwhelmed by such a large number of connections.
> Would a more robust hardware (NAT router) be likely to help? If yes, and
> specific suggestions?
>
> From what I gather, true hardware firewall appliances allow the use of
> rules that can limit the number of connections and the bandwidth allotted
> to each client IP address. This, to me, seems very attractive (although
> more expensive) and I was wondering if interposing a firewall between the
> cable modem and the router (or discarding the modem and using the firewall
> with an access point) would achieve the desired end. Any specific
> suggestions?