The market for the Internet sharing devices most users know as 'routers' has exploded over the past three years, to the point where they are becoming common in every broadband-enabled household and small business. These useful devices automatically split a fast Internet signal amongst several PCs while providing some form of firewall protection against the Big Bad Internet. When the wireless boom happened, slightly after these devices became popular, combining the two technologies was an obvious step.

802.11g is the newest official wireless data transfer standard, and is capable of transferring data at up to 54megabits per second, almost five times faster than 802.11b, the current dominant standard. Of course, most wifi 'g' devices cannot actually transfer data at a full 54mbps, but they still average about 3-3.5X the performance of 802.11b devices. Better still, they are fully backwards compatible with the older standard.

The router we are reviewing today is an interesting product for a few reasons. Firstly, it is one of the new breed of 802.11g wireless routers, and we were curious to see how its performance stacked up...

Secondly, and more specific to the device, the Gigabyte GN-B49GU is a lot more than just a home Internet sharing device. It contains a multitude of extra features that would appear to be of considerable use in a small to medium size business environment.

This is an interesting idea, since business network routing and security has traditionally been the domain of major players like Cisco and 3Com. While the Gigabyte GN-B49GU does not offer a feature set that competes with even Cisco's lowest offering, the fact remains that even Cisco's cheapest model is way too much for some business needs. The GN-B49GU might just fill a couple of niche markets, providing wireless support and routing and security features in the same package.