Shared media - improve network speed with less wireless devices?

The ...

... major bottleneck will always be the wireless connection. You won´t gain much when connecting one machine to the router, but the other machine keeps its wireless.

To have the maximum throughput in wireless, you need to get full n-draft compatible hardware and push it to use this mode only - I don´t know, if you have this setup working, but very likely you have compatibility mode active, so you can have b/g and n devices share the network via one router. So a second n-draft router would be a necessity.

Another option would be a powerline adapter from Devolo. The new ones have speeds up to 200MBit/s, but this heavily depends on your electric wire setup in your house/condo: http://www.devolo.com/consumer/dlan-mains-supply-network-fastest-200-mbit.html

The only other option would be to physically connect the two machines in question via ethernet to gain 100MBit, or better 1GBit speeds - which is, what you want for big file transfers.

Keep in mind, though, that wireless stays and falls with the optimization of its routing to get maximum throughput. The more walls and trees and what not are in between the router and your computer, the less throughput you will have. Antenna chance might help, a new location for the router and/or the computers - but that´s up for you to play with.

c-Row said:

Going completely n won't be possible unless I upgrade my old MBP to one of the newer models, and it's one of the machines that download from the MacMini's external HD... Anyway, thanks for the advice!

Click to expand...

Can't you just get a new N compatible airport card to go in the MBP? They seem to be quite common and cheap on eBay.

Otherwise, you can make a network that has separate N and G components so that the older equipment will connect to a G signal whilst the newer stuff connects to N in 2.4 or 5 GHz:

http://tntluoma.com/apple/notes-on-a-dual-mode-airport-extreme-network/

HTH

You ...

... will be brave and simply swap the internal wirelss minipci-express card: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/macbookpro_wireless_N_upgrade/macbookpro_N_card_install.html