Networks Linux Routers & Bandwidth Management

Bit of a random question guys, I'm possibly going to be setting up a few friends up in a house, six in total. They'll obviously be wanting t'internet. From personal experience, I know it's pretty simple for a single person to slow the connection down to a crawl.

That's why I'm looking at building a simple pc from spare parts which will run a linux router os, like smoothwall, clarkconnect, etc. However, I've got one feature in mind that I'd love. Namely the ability to manage bandwidth on a mac / ip address basis. I'd like to be able to specify a minimum speed each person will receive (for example something like 60kB/s), but with the ability for users to use unused bandwidth.
This means when only one or two people are using the connection, they both share the full speed, but when all of them are using it, it drops to a specified minimum. It should help to prevent too many arguments hopefully.

I know about QoS, but I feel bandwidth management plus QoS should help things be even more fairly distributed. Any ideas from the Linux / networking gurus out there?

 

Have a look at ipcop addons i'm sure there is one which does something similar.

more here
http://ipcop.org/index.php?module=pnWikka&tag=IPCopAddons

 

IPCop ++

 

I've been investigating all the distros I could find over the last few days, and I've decided to go with ClarkConnect. Just finished installing it and popping a wireless router behind it to act as a switch and access point. Thanks for your suggestions though guys