We have a LinkSys WRT54GS v6 here at my house, and we have been having some problems with it recently. Most of the time [when not under any stress], it seems to work fine. But if anybody is doing anything intensive [i.e. gaming, torrents, etc], the network will drop to nothing, often disappearing for the entire house.

Anybody have similar experiences?

If you have a shitbox (>=P133, >=32MB RAM) lying around, toss m0n0wall on it. I've had very good luck with it.

As far as your router goes, is it getting overly warm?

I have not noticed any extra heat from it, it just doesn't seem to like people downloading stuff. Also, when it slows down, programs that are connected aren't too bad, like IRC functions normally, but opening new servers, or connecting to web pages is usually non-functional [like, I have had some try to load the website for 10+ hours, with no transfer at all].


As for the bitchbok idea, I have one I am starting to set up [though I haven't yet]. Would I need some sort of PCI-ethernet card or something? We need to connect a minimum of 6 computers to it. The one I am looking to set up is about 1Ghz, 512 PC2100, figured that should be enough to handle your monowall idea.

You need two ethernet cards in the m0n0wall box. One for the Internets and one for your LAN.