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+--- Thread: Network Speed Questions (/showthread.php?tid=55845)
Network Speed Questions - Stavs - 05-31-2008
If I am downloading files to a network drive, vs directly to my MBP, my transfer speeds should be the same right?
I have everything hooked up via 802.11n.
Re: Network Speed Questions - Mr645 - 05-31-2008
Gig ethernet should be much faster. Wireless, even n is still below built in Mac wired speeds
Re: Network Speed Questions - Stavs - 05-31-2008
Right, that i know. Here's my setup:
Upstairs connected to cable modem-Airport Extreme N
Downstairs: Time Capsule Connected to AEBS via N
Downstairs: Macbook Connected to AEBS via N
Theoretically, my speed to donload to the TC should be the same as to the MBP, right?
Re: Network Speed Questions - Mr645 - 05-31-2008
I would think so. The limit should still be your wireless connection, not the TC device
Re: Network Speed Questions - Stavs - 05-31-2008
Ok..it seems I get slower rates when downloading directly to the TC...I gues I have some investigating to do.
Re: Network Speed Questions - guitarist - 05-31-2008
[quote Stavs]
Theoretically, my speed to donload to the TC should be the same as to the MBP, right?
No. Not necessarily. It certainly would be nice if a drive residing on a network performed at identical download/write speeds to your own computer. But I think wireless network performance is not the only factor in the amount of time it takes data to be downloaded and written onto a target network drive. There may be some other overhead involved.
Your computer has a processor and a hard drive controller that plays a role in read/write speed. I don't know what the Time Capsule has, but I think besides downloading (network performance) the data, the device (Time Capsule) you're downloading to has to govern it and write it.
Re: Network Speed Questions - Stavs - 05-31-2008
[quote guitarist][quote Stavs]
Theoretically, my speed to donload to the TC should be the same as to the MBP, right?
No. Not necessarily. It certainly would be nice if a drive residing on a network performed at identical download/write speeds to your own computer. But I think wireless network performance is not the only factor in the amount of time it takes data to be downloaded and written onto a target network drive. There may be some other overhead involved.
Your computer has a processor and a hard drive controller that plays a role in read/write speed. I don't know what the Time Capsule has, but I think besides downloading (network performance) the data, the device (Time Capsule) you're downloading to has to govern it and write it.
What about a true NAS device? Do you think it would give better performance?
Re: Network Speed Questions - guitarist - 06-01-2008
I think the Time Capsule actually is a true NAS device. (as well as being a WiFi Router) and though I've not personally owned a dedicated NAS drive, the consensus I've seen around here is that that A. most tend to depend on systems that aren't terribly mac friendly and B. They are notoriously slow.
Here's a question: do you notice the TC is pretty zippy with short writes, short downloads, but slows down on bigger or longer ones?
I seem recall reading a review that had graphs, showing that it's mainly the longer writes where the performance (and wireless speed) weaknesses are revealed. But it performs quite well with lots of short writes. Which is what Time Machine does, essentially, it writes a lot of little things frequently. Less commonly (except that first backup) does Time Machine write big chunks of data. For what it's designed to do, my understanding is that Time Capsule's performance is pretty good.
I have a new Airport Extreme. I connected an external hard drive to it via its USB port, hoping to have a Time Capsule-like experience. Maybe it's the USB, but it was so slow--wired or wireless--I wanted to kill myself. I abandoned the idea after a few days, really disappointed.
For what you're trying to do, it seems like you'd have more benefits downloading to a standard external hard drive, connected to your mac (or one of your macs) via Firewire port. An external FW drive. USB is popular too, but many of us prefer FW for performance, especially with regards to big data read/writes. And as always, wired connections offer significantly faster performance than even the best currently-available wireless connection speeds. Whenever possible, or whenever convenient, enjoy the benefits of wired. (a gigabit ethernet network) With broadband, it's fast all the way through. And you can still enjoy reasonably fast wireless speeds. Except for those really big file transfers.
Also worth noting, if you have two macs or more, and you're running Leopard, it's really easy to access any drive attached to any machine from any other machine anywhere on the network.
Just curious, how did you end up choosing to have downloads directed to your Time Capsule? Is there a benefit to using the Time Capsule as a download target? Compared to other options?
Re: Network Speed Questions - Stavs - 06-01-2008
I figured that since I download everything to my internal drive on my MBP, that it would just be easier to download directly to the TC where it will end up sitting in storage for later use. Lets say Fusion updates the software, rather than download the 120mb file to my laptop, I would just download it to my TC so that I could bypass having to download it, and then copy it over to that drive later...kill 2 birds with one stone.
I could have an extrenal connected to the MBP, but that just defeats the purpose of being untethered. It would be great if I could run some Cat6 throughout the house, but thats not going to happen as I dont want to tear into walls since we will be moving. The next house will definitely be wired as we are getting even more connected. I'm in the process of ripping my dvd collection so we can use them in a "jukebox" type situation with the Popcorn Hour device (once its delivered!).
I'll probably just go back to hooking the TC to my MBP via a cat 6 cable when I want to transfer...its a small hassle, but the speed is definitely there. As my storage needs increase and I blow through the 500gb, I may add another NAS device, probably a Synology and then I'll test to see if the TC is the weakness.
Overall, I'm not sure if it makes a difference on smaller or larger files. I'm going to have to do some more tests to figure it out.
Its wierd that you has slow speeds with the USB in a wired config. I notice very zippy rates on the TC or the AEBS (with an external) when I hooked up via cat6.