As I mentioned in my earlier post, I’m running OpenWRT firmware on my Linksys router. This enables the router to do more than just act as a firewall/router, so that it can do things that you’d normally need some pretty expensive kit to run. (e.g. A Linux box dedicated to the task or some pricey Cisco hardware.)

It works great, I’m happy to say. Package management is smooth and easy, and the basics of routing and firewalling are all taken care of. But there’s a few snags…

Firstly, the firewall. It all works off of iptables for netfilter, which is to say that I need to write some fairly hairy firewall rules. Added to this, I want to use video chat, which requires about sixteen thousand ports to be open in order to work. (Okay, 22 ports, but come ON!)

I’ve been a loyal Comcast cable internet customer since they first came to my town (some time around ‘99, I think). During that time, I’ve endured a few rate hikes, and have generally been pleased with the improvements to service (especially once AT&T sold out to Comcast and I suddenly had an internet connection that was up more often than down).

Unfortunately, I now live in a new neighborhood, populated with young folks like me and my wife. These people like their internet connections, and they either are major bittorrent users or their kids are gobbling up bandwidth on MySpace. End result: My actual connection to the internet is about 1.5Mbit, when I’m paying for a supposed six meg connection!