Many that play PC games, such as battle.net, need to be able to set up port triggering. Typical "hardware" routers have the ability to set this up from online menus. However, using a Linux PC to perform your router functions can provide much more control and versatility than can be realized with a "hardware" router. All of your NAT (network address translation), firewall, and port forwarding functions can be implemented by iptables, the de facto firewall in Linux versions 2.4.x and 2.6.x.