Digital Trends

Gigabyte B49GU Router

September 2nd, 2004 | by Jeff Fila

Features and Design (continued)

 

Incorporated in the B49GU are many of the same features we have come to expect from wireless routers: WEP and WPA encryption; NAT and DHCP (obviously); port forwarding; DMZ hosting; and MAC address control. As a default, broadcasting of the wireless SSID is disabled — which is a good thing from a security standpoint, but might cause problems for some inexperienced users.

 

What separates the Gigabyte B49GU apart from other 802.11g routers we have tested is the inclusion of several business-class features that greatly improve its usefulness for small businesses and even home users. Besides the usual feature set mentioned above, the B49GU also includes advanced routing and security measures often only found in more expensive devices. On top of the list are advanced firewall features. The B49GU has ability to allow IPSEC, PPTP and L2TP VPNs through the firewall. Static rules can also be set to block or allow specific data through the firewall. The firewall also supports stateful packet inspection, a protection scheme that allows the device to examine packets coming in or going out through the network, which helps in the identification of DOS attacks or Trojan horses sending data over the internet.

 

The B49GU's WAN configuration also allows for you to specify up to four WAN's to connect to. At home this may be unnecessary because you probably only have one ISP — most likely a single cable or DSL provider. But for office environments, this helps with network redundancy. If your internet connection on your first ISP fails, the B49GU can then start using the second ISP, ensuring you uninterrupted internet service.

 

Another advanced feature of the B49GU is what Gigabyte calls “forced IP mapping.” This allows you to still keep using DHCP, but to force specific IP addresses to the specific MAC address of a device. This ensures that certain devices get the same IP address while other devices can get IP addresses assigned dynamically as they access the network.

 

Yet another feature incorporated into the B49GU is Dynamic DNS. This allows you to host a website with your home internet connection, even if your IP address changes often. The router allows you to link the router to one of four Dynamic DNS services such as http://www.dyndns.org/. When you do so, traffic destined for your web server will be routed to the right location on your network.

 

On the wireless side, the B49GU supports WDS (Wireless Distribution System) which allows the device to act as an access point bridging another wireless network. It also supports the use of RADIUS servers (Remote Authentication Dial-In User Service) which allows users to dial in remotely and authorize their use on the network.

 

And finally, the B49GU supports URL or IP blocking. The device will allow you to set up a table of IP addresses or key words that are blocked from access. This feature can be useful if you want to block access to certain sites or URLs with certain key words. Unfortunately, this feature could use a bit more work. It only allows you to block up to 10 different IP addresses or key words and when it does block a site, there is nothing that tells the user they are being blocked. The browser just keeps trying to access the site, and at times will display some data, like the screenshot of Microsoft.com below when we blocked the word “soft”. It would also be nice if the URL blocking allowed you to block specific IP addresses or MAC addresses. The feature also is either completely on or completely off. If you add a blocking rule and want to temporarily disable it you can't — you have to delete the rule and add it back in later if you ever want it back.

 

URL blocking can disallow some sites, or in this case (Microsoft.com) it can just strip it down.