Welcome, gentle reader.
This document hopes to enlighten you on how to do more with Linux 2.2/2.4 routing. Unbeknownst to most users, you already run tools which allow you to do spectacular things. Commands like route and ifconfig are actually very thin wrappers for the very powerful iproute2 infrastructure.
I hope that this HOWTO will become as readable as the ones by Rusty Russell of (amongst other things) netfilter fame.
You can always reach us by writing to the HOWTO team. However, please consider posting to the mailing list (see the relevant section) if you have questions which are not directly related to this HOWTO. We are no free helpdesk, but we often will answer questions asked on the list.
Before losing your way in this HOWTO, if all you want to do is simple traffic shaping, skip everything and head to the Other possibilities chapter, and read about CBQ.init.