1. A method comprising: receiving, at a residential gateway at a first time, a request from a local network client device for a network based service, the request received via a local area network supported by the residential gateway; determining, at the residential gateway based on local area network resources available at the first time, whether to perform a transmission configuration operation to apply a set of rules for communications via the local area network; conditioned upon determining not to perform the transmission configuration operation, bypassing the transmission configuration operation; and conditioned upon determining to perform the transmission configuration operation, apply the set of rules by: determining, at the residential gateway, an identity of the local network client device based on the request; accessing a set of rules in a memory of the residential gateway to identify a particular rule of the set of rules, the particular rule associated with the identity of the local network client device; and applying the particular rule to data corresponding to the network based service, wherein applying the particular rule includes allocating a high-speed port to a first group of local network devices and allocating a low-speed port to a second group of local network devices, wherein the local network client device is included either in the first group of local network devices or in the second group of local network devices based on the particular rule, wherein each of the first group of local network devices and the second group of local network devices includes other local network client devices.