My home networking consists of a slackware box, running iptables with a dual NIC. That's the firewall. I have a Netgear FSM 7352S, which is a level 3 switch, which I am currently just using as a switch. Clients are numerous PCs and a couple of networked printers.

The "firewall" machine is also a file server.

Here are the issues I could use some pointers on:

I'd like to assure that the VOIP adapters get priority, assuring QOS, particularly voice quality.

I'd like to provide reasonable priority for video streaming, such as hulu and other sources, that the kids use.

I'd like bulk data transfers (like backing up partitions) to the file server that runs iptables, and acts as the firewall/gateway for a cable internet connection. It would be good to be able to do this without impacting VOIP and video streaming.

Pointers to tutorials or similar cases would be appreciated. Thanks.

IPcop and Endian are firewalls that do a perfect traffic shaping. I use Endian with an Asterisk IP-PBX and a VoIP-setup.

I don't think that giving the firewall also the role of fileserver is 'good practise' from security perspective.

Endian can do traffic shaping on a certain protocol. But when you want bulk data backup, I suggest you use a different NIC so that Endian can split the data destined for VoIP to one NIC, and data destined for backup to another.

What I'm suggesting requires a dedicated firewall. Or maybe use Xen for virtualisation on the same hardware.