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People did connect straight to modems back in the day, some still do. What a router did is it offered people the ability to have an AP and a bit of security since there is a rudimentary firewall in a router so everyone switched to them and ever since we have the router modem combo in other words horrible crap. Being behind a router for a normal home user is a good idea since connecting straight to a modem your external IP addresses your pc directly and a lot of the "background noise" hits it.

Many factors come into play here, especially when you have cable/adsl. It depends into what exchange you are connected, how big the load is etc... Having similar speeds does not mean you have the same ISP as your friends. 80ms is still playable in my mind.

It could be a strange issue if you use hibernate once in a while your adapter doesn't work normally, happened to me, skype and some other stuff works, nothing pings. Restarting the pc seems to fix the issue. Also what kind of an adapter are you running usb or the integrated one ?

Because all router modem combos are horrible, don't ask why they just are. Its more worth it to buy a decent modem (ex. Motorola Surfboard for cable) and a stand alone router, these setups last longer and don't die every 5 minutes.

I looked around and it does not seem like it. If you want LACP id recommend an Intel NIC.

With those speeds for 80$ good luck

If you can spend a tiny bit more the Linksys ea4500 will serve you well for a long time: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=73612&promoid=1479 There are also cheaper EA series models like: http://ncix.com/products/?sku=70084&promoid=1479 I really don't recommend buying consumer routers below 100$ Btw an SSID is the name of a wireless network that the router broadcasts, only dedicated access points can have 4-5 of those at the same time. Its not the devices that use the connection just so you know.

Spoofing an IP is useless instead you are doing a DoS. If for example you spoof an IP and send a server a packet the server sends the response to the spoofed IP and you get nothing back, you can do reflection stuff like that, but generally there is no benefit to spoofing an IP and its not the same as VPN even though it looks very similar.

How fast are we talking about ?

Port forwarding or NAT, DMZ does the same thing instead it forwards all the ports to a specific host and should not be used.

Go for Linux, its gonna be a double win for you. You will get your server running and youl learn a bit of Linux while you're at it. Id recommend Debian for that (non GUI), but if it seems too hard get the GUI version. Also don't run Apache servers they are history, go with something lighter and newer like Nginx or Lighttpd.

Most routers will just crumble ant 100mbps, my Mikrotik is at 60% load when im downloading and thats with not much going on the LAN. If you don't need wireless and want beast performance, reliability: http://www.ubnt.com/edgemax#edge-router-lite its ~100$.

Read up on some maximum power outputs of wireless. Anyway, other than all ISP routers being crap, routers don't differentiate from wired and wireless connections because its not their job that's why you can prioritize traffic to a specific host for a specific type of traffic in any way you like, but i doubt that many ISP routers have that feature, speed limiting should be available though so try that. Since you are getting 250 kbps speeds i would say don't bother changing anything it won't help much.

1mbps is what like 100 KBps, any router can do that without breaking a sweat, and your wifi should be fine a few floors up even with lower signal.

From my experience decent routers start at about ~100$ with a few cheaper exceptions, but usually anything below is real crap and you will end up spending more as time goes on. Anything above $200 is overkill for a normal user with the exception for wireless AC if you really need it.

Smart switches and Managed switches support LACP aka Teaming. It does not offer any benefit if you are transferring a large file for example, you wont go over 1gig in transfer speeds just so you know, however you will have 2-4 of those for parallel tasks.

Check if all your devices are gigabit capable, check if you have good cable and its not damaged. You will not be able to select 1000mbps mode in the setup as gigabit auto negotiates speed (it will work or not, you can't force it). Find out if the switch downstairs (the FTTB switch that the ISP put somewhere) is gigabit, this is probably where the problem is if you are getting 100/100 speeds and not more than that, since most ISP will save on cable and run you only 2 pairs while leaving the other 2 for a neighbor. As for the switch its usually a 10/100 with a gigabit uplink to the ISP something like: http://www.dlink.com/uk/en/support/product/des-3526-xstack-24-port-10-100mbps-stackable-switch There is a small chance the cable that links you up to the switch is damaged (a wire inside is broken, a jack has not been properly attached etc...) While we are still on the cable topic, ISP's tend to use a thick cable with lots of wires inside then split them, some gigabit equipment might detect too much interference in the cable and work only at 10/100 so trying another NIC might be worth while. And just for the fun of it i have a P4 running with an integrated gig NIC that still pulls ~800mbps so your pc should be fine

He doesn't need to worry about wavelengths and getting his own SFP/Converter. If you are getting FTTH (Fiber to the home) where you get fiber right where you live the ISP 99% of the time will provide a fiber -> ethernet converter (something like http://salestores.com/stores/images/images_747/TFC2000S20.jpg just in a more pretty box) there is an off chance that they will give you a router that has an SFP slot and a module, then provide us the model of the router. In any other FTTx instance you will get a normal ethernet cable to plug into your existing router or do as you see fit.

4 pins are used for a standard 10/100 connection, the extra pins can be used for gigabit or other applications such as PoE (Power over ethernet). Many ISP's where i live run 2 separate connections on one wire to save on running an extra cable.

You can have multiple networks by just using your pfsense box, i don't see why you would ever want this but you can do it.

Dual band or not they are on the same network and should be easily accessible, windows might need some persuasion like the IP of the other machine, but it has to work.

You need to get openwrt installed first.

Oh so you want to play around with people, then OpenWRT is what you need. It has its own small web server which you can use for the fake pages so that you would not need the laptop. Raspberry can do a lot of stuff, OpenWRT is Linux based so you should be able to find all the same or similar packages without the need for installing owrt on the Pi.

You can just slice the power cord and hook up a 12v or whatever power the device is and it will work just fine. You can buy one of those small lead batteries that can offer ~1.5A of current which is more than enough. The device will take as much as it needs, but never more than its power supply was rated for unless you have a short somewhere so don't worry about the current draw. Typically a normal router will draw 9W so that works out for about 0.75A of current at 12V, more voltage = less current draw. However unless the router has dual radio you will only have a LAN unless you plan to use wired ports for access and Wi-Fi as a bridge. Tethering could work if OpenWRT supports it.