Because Everyone (Still) Needs a Router

It can be done. I'm doing it now. It's not cheap, though, as the FiOS router is actually 3+ devices in one: a MoCA adapter for the uplink on channel C, a MoCA adapter providing networking to the cable boxes on one of the D channels, and a regular wireless router. In order to remove it without plugging into the RJ-45 port on your ONT, you'll need all three parts. Additionally, the ch. C uplink is encrypted, so you need to grab the encryption key from the router (available buried somewhere in the web interface). I picked up a Netgear MCAB1001 kit and it's working quite well.

Running Linux?

Avoid any ASUS routers unless you're flashing a new firmware. Awful experience. My last one was the N15. It wouldn't even give out a DHCP lease to two different computers and four different NICs.

And, as for:

"Ever sat in an internet shop, a hotel room or lobby, a local hotspot, and wondered why you can't access your email? Unknown to you, the guy in the next room or at the next table is hogging the internet bandwidth to download the Lord Of The Rings Special Extended Edition in 1080p HDTV format."

Nmap is your friend. Find the offending port and flood it. Since the local connection is always quicker than the Internet connection, it's easy to do. I've done this countless times, and only to those torrenting. At one cafe I use to frequent I would just start scanning whenever this one guy came in. I wonder if he ever developed a negative Pavlovian response to seeing me at the cafe and his torrenting success.

Do I feel guilty about basically DoS? Really, no. If someone tries to take control of a limited resource... shit is going to happen.

Every TCP/UDP endpoint (such as a client or a server) maintains a state-table. As you might guess, it stores the state of each connection. You can view it using the 'netstat' command on Windows and Linux.

Bittorrent tends to create several entries in the state-table (since you're typically connected to hundred of seeds/leeches), which are each stored in memory, and uses up CPU resources to setup/maintain/teardown.

So if you were downloading a file via, say, Rapidshare, there'd be probably 1 TCP (you can configure your browser to use more) connection for your router to track, and do the necessary TCP handshakes, acknowledgments, RWIN scaling etc. Multiply all that's necessary for 1 TCP connection by N, where N is the number of peers you're connected to, and the limited resources on a $60 router get used up fast.

Early models of the now-famous Linksys WRT54G could reliably be crashed by torrenting while using stock firmware. A power-cycle was necessary to get it running again. Fun times.

However, all this only applies if you're running the router in NAT mode, which means the router takes the IP address from your ISP, and acts as the endpoint on behalf of your computer. If the router is running in bridged mode, then your computer acts as the endpoint, as much more equipped to handle large numbers of TCP connections.

Edit: Formatting, Grammar.

This is perfect timing. I need a new router at home, and my experience with Tomato in the past has been excellent. The real-time bandwidth graph (and historical graphs) were my favorite feature. Well, that and it Just Worked!

Now to find the best place to buy one of these Asus routers in Australia...

I disagree with the router recommendation. The Asus RT-N16 uses a Broadcom chipset which isn't well-supported by OpenWRT. Better choices would be something with an Atheros chipset, like the Netgear WNDR3700v2 or WNDR3800. Buffalo also has some nice models. Even if you don't plan to use OpenWRT itself, it's a base used by other firmware projects, so you might want to run a derivative of it in the future.

http://wiki.openwrt.org/toh/start