What performance can I expect on WL-500GP?

[PinkBunny]

I am trying to turn it into my home "network hub" using OpenWRT Kamikaze7.09 and additional optware software. That means that I require it to be smb server for 2x500Gb USB hard disks, torrent and to run screen with irssi. I however have some doubts and several questions about it (since I'd like to avoid running a machine thats constantly stuck on 100% cpu, its heating enough already).

Question 1 (swap):
I see people complaining about their swap not being used, has anyone cleared this issue and confirm that kamikaze7.09 can use swap?
Is having a swap file necessary (or at least highly recommended) for what I plan to run on my machine?
What sort of difference in performance will I experiance with and without swap for my setup.

I'd prefer to have both of my disks hotswappable, but I guess if I have swap running on one of them it wont be that easy :)
(of course I would properly unmount one having optware on it and kill running opt programs if I need to remove it :)

Question 2 (smb):
I have noticed that large samba tranfers and intensive I/O operations take heavy toll even on my desktop computer so I am wondering what sort of performance can I expect from this little gizmo (240mhz, 32MB ram)?
For example ... will streaming a movie from one of attached disks be possible, what sort of transfer rates are we talking about?

Question 3 (torrent):
I plan to run rtorrent or some other console client, what are the limitations I should be aware of, number of connections etc?
I have very modest internet connection 256k and I prefer having only one torrent active in a queue, so I guess thats helping a bit.

[wpte]

1.
It's recommended to use swap. With a torrent client and samba it's likely you need some. remember that it's always secure to have some space left when the ram is full, this will make it faster:)
I can't confirm that kamikaze will use the swap, I've never worked with it.

2.
The samba is pretty good when using windows xp. I get transfers of 30mbits while the disk can do a 36mbit. the cpu usage stays quite low, about 40 to 60% on high transfer-rates.
On vista the samba protocol has changed a bit, so you can upload a file with a limited speed of about 12mbits, while you still can download files with 30mbits...
this is on samba 2, perhaps samba 3 is faster, but it's also havier.;)

3.
I'm using transmission atm. I haven't had any limitiations on downloading, and I usually hook up with 50 other clients.
there could be a file limitation tough, how bigger the file, how more cpu is being used.