A router, which may be a wireless gateway, for routing messages between communications networks, including a persistent storage, and a transport interface for sending outgoing messages to communications devices associated with a first communications network, and receiving incoming messages from the communications devices, and having a storage for storing pending outgoing and incoming messages for subsequent sending by the interface component, the transport interface being coupled to the persistent storage and having an associated shutdown module for serializing at least some of the pending messages to the persistent storage during shutdown of the interface component. The router may include a plurality of the transport interfaces, and a controller coupled to the transport interfaces for directing at least one of the transport interfaces to retrieve from the persistent storage for subsequent sending the pending messages serialized thereto by a further one of the transport interfaces during shutdown thereof.