Linux Box as router...

ok i have a spare computer w/ 2 NIC's in it... i want to set it up as a router/firewall and linux appears to me the best option...
i want to be able to control how much bandwidth is alotted to each computer on an IP/MAC address basis and when the computers are allowed online on an IP/MAC address basis
can anyone reccomend a good distribution that has these features and is relatively easy to set up???

I would sugest using clark conect its easy to set up and simple to use just conect up to it 192.168.1.1:81 and you can administrate the computer from there. you can easily change everything from there and it has lots of additional features. I started out using this until I got a better understanding of how iptables worked and now I use slackware on my router.

http://www.clarkconnect.org/

a couple other links you may want to check out:

http://www.coyotelinux.com/
http://www.linuxrouter.org

ive had some experiance with the first one, and i have to say iam pretty impressed. i believe they also have a load balancing solution avaliable called wolverine

I would also suggest something like ESmith (I think it was recently bought over, not sure if the name has changed).

I am sure some fancy IPTables scripts would allow access only at certain times, not sure about bandwidth allocation though. DHCPd (The ISC DHCP server) can be set up to allocate specific IPs to specific MAC addresses.

router

I'm working on an openBSD router/gateway. Talk about secure...

ok thanks guys ill check em all out...

*edit*
ok as of now im using clarkconnect and all seemd to be going smoothly...