Home Routers w/ Decent QoS Performance?

danwarne asks: "With VoIP becoming rapidly more popular, quality of service (QoS) settings in home routers are also emerging as a key piece of functionality for the average user. QoS settings, which allows important or time-sensitive network traffic to be prioritized over less important packets, used to only be offered for corporate-level routers. Now, many hardware manufacturers have started including such capabilities in their mainstream routers, some doing it simply by a firmware upgrade without any change to the power of the underlying hardware. The emerging problem is that most home routers don't do a very good job at all with QoS, especially under heavy load (from P2P apps, for example), and home routers don't seem to have what it takes to prioritize sending Voice over IP packets first, leading to glitchy VoIP calls. VoIP operators around the world are facing this problem as they try to turn VoIP into a 'consumer-friendly' plug-and-play service. Does anyone know if someone has done extensive testing on home routers and modem/routers that investigates their ability to deliver QoS? Also, what hardware elements would be required in a router to do QoS reliably?"

Comments

Easiest answer:

[mikeage]

WRT-54G(S) running sveasoft's firmware. Yes, some people question the legality of the distribution method, but at $60 for the router + $20 for the firmware subscription, it's an instant solution. I'm running it on a 1.5Mbps/96Kbps to manage bittorrent, emule, packet8, counter-strike, and websurfing, and it runs great. More important -- it passes the wife test (aka, she doesn't notice that I'm downloading while she's talking).

Re:Easiest answer:

[aderusha]

to save yourself the $20 (and the general assholery that sveasoft is prone to), download the GPL'd firmware here: http://www.gonzo-wireless.co.uk/torrents/

if you're wondering what all the stink is about, read here: http://wrt54g.serwer.net/

Re:Easiest answer:

[Anonymous Coward]

For a more hassle-proof source of information, go to http://slashdot.org/~TheIndividual/journal

Re:Easiest answer:

[alatesystems]

Just get it from TheIndividual here on his slashdot journal. An AC posted this below, but he's at 0 and I don't have mod points, so I'm reposting it.

I've used the Sveasoft firmware in the past, but I immediately returned the router. That WRT54g is just not fast enough to deal with my 8mbps internet and do QoS on it at the same time. I went back to using my custom iptables and QoS scripts on my linux box which is an athlon xp 2000+.

That Sveasoft dude is an evil idiot, and needs to be hit on the head with a GPL stick. I wouldn't pay him for it, even if he included the antidote.

Linksys WRT54GS w/ Sveasoft

[maggard]

I reccomend the Linksys WRT54GS. It's about US$10 more then the G model but includes more memory you'll be able to take advantage of in the future. The router can be found online for around US$60 online or US$90 retail.

Then install the Sveasoft firmware. The shipping version is free, access to the beta version & support for it is US$20. Some folks dissaprove of this strategy but the FSF has green-lighted it and it does pay for the project.

QoS, VPN (endpoints), SSH, filtering, upped antennae power, it's all there. They've extended the Linksys web interface to handle most of the expanded functioniality and below that there's a real working Open Source Linux with a happy command line.

Sure it's not an old clunker running something else. It's also small, quiet, stable, wireless if you want to take advantage of that. I dunno about you but being able to replace a 24/7 big noisy hot box in my living space with a smaller quieter cooler one is worth the small premium.

Re:Linksys WRT54GS w/ Sveasoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the development version is free as well, because it's licensed under the GPL. You can pay $20 for support, if you want, but if you don't need support you can also get the firmware here.