Using QoS to prioritize your bandwidth

You can use the Quality of Service (QoS) feature on many routers to optimize your internet connection for devices and services that are most important to you. Adam at Lifehacker put together a quick walkthrough for tuning the QoS settings on our favorite router firmware, the open-source DD-WRT.

Your internet connection is an indispensable part of your life, but between BitTorrent, Xbox Live, web browsing, and VoIP, sometimes there’s not enough bandwidth to go around. But rather than running around the house shutting down all of your computers next time you’re experiencing a little lag on Xbox Live or Skype is breaking up on you, you can set up Quality of Service (QoS) rules on your router to distribute bandwidth to your different gadgets and applications based on your priorities. Today I’ll show you how.

The nice thing about setting up QoS on your router is that you can prioritize packets by application, IP and MAC address, or a specific router port, all to your own preferences. Everyone has different needs, so you may want to maximize the available bandwidth for VoIP or network gaming, guarantee a chunk of bandwidth for ssh connections or your web server, or throttle down P2P applications so that they don’t affect other network services. There’s nothing set in stone, so you can really make your router work for you to improve the way your internet connection is utilized.

Ensure a Fast Internet Connection When You Need It – Link