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Gigabyte GN-B49G Wireless Router review

Gigabyte, more famous for its motherboards, is out to take over the world. Failing that, they are looking to diversify their product lineup and rely less of motherboard revenue. This brings us to the reason why you clicked on this link in the first place - you are looking to see if Gigabyte's entry into the Wireless-G market is any good compared to the big boys in the networking market (Linksys, Microsoft, D-link). In the wireless networking market in particular, not every product is made the same, and performance (both speed and range) can vary dramatically between different brands.

802.11g

802.11g is the specification developed to replace the now-aging 802.11b, with speed as the most obvious advantage over the older specification (54 mbps vs. 11 mbps). If you've ever tried to saturate a wireless connection, you should have found that compared to wired Ethernet, wireless networks do not reach anywhere close their declared bandwidth (the 11 mbps of 802.11b generally results in no more than 500 kilobytes a second compared to 900 kilobytes a second on 10 mbps wired LAN). Due to this discrepancy, we expect the same thing to occur with 802.11g equipment (reaching no more than a fraction of the declared 54 mbps).