At this point, you should open up another browser window to verify that you are connected to the Internet. Assuming this, you can take a closer look at the rest of the AirCruiser GN-BC01's configuration screens, starting with 'status.'

The 'status' screen of the Gigabyte AirCruiser GN-BC01 contains some useful information that is not accessible in many brands of home router, such as the ability to see the Routing and ARP tables. Unfortunately it's also missing a few things, like the ability to quickly see if the router is actually properly connected to the Internet.

We'd prefer to see a status screen with the essential information more easily accessible.

As mentioned, setup was fairly easy to accomplish. Once that was done, we had no problem accessing and sharing the Internet amongst three separate computers. We did experience a couple of unexplained Internet disconnections during testing. The router was definitely the culprit, since yanking the power and replugging fixed the problem each time. Not something you'd want to have to do with your router too often though.

The AirCruiser GN-BC01's Firewall

Firewall configuration in the AirCruiser GN-BC01 is governed by a single screen of four check boxes which enable and disable various settings, and that's it. No other form of control is allowed over the firewall of this device, which we found inadequate and rather disappointing.

The four options allow ICMP (ping) packets to be blocked, remote management of the AirCruiser GN-BC01 to be enabled or disabled, NetBIOS over TCP/IP to be allowed or disallowed and DoS (Denial of Service) protection to be turned on or off. The latter will automatically cut off large streams of repetitive data after a certain point.

Apparently Gigabyte has enough confidence in the flexibility of their firewall software to severely restrict the amount of configurable options available to the user. We could not even find a way to turn the firewall off...