QOS on a shared network

[Muso]

Hello guys

I'm currently sharing a 10 meg virgin cable connection with 4 other guys. I am quite big on my gaming so ping means a lot to me. Currently playing games is impossible I get lag, spikes and high pings, this must be due to the other chaps downloading, streaming or even browsing.
Anyway after doing some research I've discovered that you can download a firmware called Tomato and load it onto a fairly cheap router such as the Linsys WRT54GL and program some Quality of Service settings.
I was wondering if anyone else has done this and how effective it actually is? I understand the idea of splitting the bandwith but surely the latency is different from the pure "speed"?
Is it going to be worth spending time/effort messing around trying to get this sorted or should I just buy another connection?

Cheers

 

[Muso]

Thanks for the replies.

Azuse05, what do you mean the RAF MODS? Could you please pass me some information on it please as I've not heard of it.
I just want to give my gaming priority over everything else surely this isn't rocket science? I'm happy to cap torrents to hell if needs be.

Cheers

 

[Muso]

Figured it out for myself, installed victeks tomato mod on a Linksys WRT54GL and simply added the mac address of the xbox in a rule which sais to take all the bandwith it needs 100% priority.
To the guy who mentioned it unfair me capping people to have a nice ping, please correct me if I'm wrong but online gaming uses very little bandwith and shouldn't affect web browsing or video streaming too much?

Can anyone comment on setting up class of services for IP addys vs MAC addresses?

surely its a hell of a lot easier to just use a MAC address as it is static and requires no more messing around, whereas you have to configure a static IP.

Cheers