On my laptop, when I run any downloads, torrents, etc, browsing is crippled.
I read somewhere that you could configure your iptables powered router to prioritize certain network traffic.
Could I do the same on my pc for all network traffic? I would like to prioritize packets in the following order:
The Linux kernel has the ability to do traffic shaping / QoS which can be set up using the tc(8) command (not iptables). The full details are too much to go in to an answer here, but as a first step you may want to look at the Linux Advanced Routing & Traffic Control howto.
There are also a number of applications that build on the tc command to allow you to more easily define shaping rules such as wondershaper or as part of a firewall system such as shorewall.
