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AirPort Gigabit Ethernet: Improved since late 2009?

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phositadc

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 9, 2012
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I bought a Time Capsule in late 2009 (not sure if I have the 2nd gen, released July 30, 2009, or the 3rd gen, released October 20, 2009). According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Time_Capsule), it has Gigabit Ethernet.

I use wired Ethernet connections almost exclusively and barely use the wifi capability of my Time Capsule. For wired Ethernet connections, would I be seeing much of an upgrade to go from my 2009 Time Capsule to a current-generation Time Capsule? I obviously know that the wifi capabilities have substantially improved, but I'm specifically concerned with the wired Ethernet connections.

My 2009 and the current generation both simply use GigE. So for wired connections, will my old one be essentially just as fast as the new ones? Or is there more going on under the hood than just being GigE or not?

Any advice appreciated.

Edit: One other question. Anybody know if both the 2009 and the current-gen are SATA II? Or has the current-gen been updated to SATA III?
 
phositadc said:
I bought a Time Capsule in late 2009 (not sure if I have the 2nd gen, released July 30, 2009, or the 3rd gen, released October 20, 2009). According to Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Time_Capsule), it has Gigabit Ethernet.

I use wired Ethernet connections almost exclusively and barely use the wifi capability of my Time Capsule. For wired Ethernet connections, would I be seeing much of an upgrade to go from my 2009 Time Capsule to a current-generation Time Capsule? I obviously know that the wifi capabilities have substantially improved, but I'm specifically concerned with the wired Ethernet connections.

My 2009 and the current generation both simply use GigE. So for wired connections, will my old one be essentially just as fast as the new ones? Or is there more going on under the hood than just being GigE or not?

Any advice appreciated.

Edit: One other question. Anybody know if both the 2009 and the current-gen are SATA II? Or has the current-gen been updated to SATA III?
Click to expand...

You may notice slight improvement in wired client performance. Even if it is SATA I the internal disk is slowed by the controller inside the Time Capsule. While a current TC is faster than a 2009 model, it is nowhere near the theoretical limits of a SATA II controller!
 
phositadc said:
Edit: One other question. Anybody know if both the 2009 and the current-gen are SATA II? Or has the current-gen been updated to SATA III?
Click to expand...

I dont think that even matters as the wired connection would cap out at a lower rate than what even Sata II can provide.

If you are looking for a faster means of backup your best bet would be usb 3.0 or thunderbolt at this time.
 
I have the new Time Capsule, and this is what the BlackMagic disk test reports with a wired gigabit ethernet connection. As others have said, there is some kind of disk bottleneck since this doesn't approach the speed that ethernet can deliver.

You could try running the same test with your older device and see how it compares.

ethernet-blackmagic.png
 
Boyd01 said:
I have the new Time Capsule, and this is what the BlackMagic disk test reports with a wired gigabit ethernet connection. As others have said, there is some kind of disk bottleneck since this doesn't approach the speed that ethernet can deliver.

You could try running the same test with your older device and see how it compares.

Image
Click to expand...


Thanks. I've run that test on mine. It's been awhile but I think my results were closer to 40/40, so yours is faster... Though maybe not so much to warrant buying a new device. I guess if I really want speed I should get a diskless NAS and drop an ssd in it.
 
phositadc said:
Thanks. I've run that test on mine. It's been awhile but I think my results were closer to 40/40, so yours is faster... Though maybe not so much to warrant buying a new device. I guess if I really want speed I should get a diskless NAS and drop an ssd in it.
Click to expand...

You are going to cap out at about 100 MB/s on anything running on a gigabit network. Dropping in a SSD is not going to help.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view
 
AirPort Gigabit Ethernet: Improved since late 2009?

Kashsystems said:
You are going to cap out at about 100 MB/s on anything running on a gigabit network. Dropping in a SSD is not going to help.



http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view
Click to expand...


Latency. Ever wonder why it takes several seconds to access your network storage? Takes a long time to for the disk to speed up. Not so for SSD. You are of course correct about transfer speed though, and depending on usage, latency may not matter to most people. But for me a low latency network drive is quite a nice improvement over an hdd, transfer speeds aside.

Edit: oh and I can understand your answer is responsive to my other post, and in that context your answer is spot on. It was not clear from my post that I view other things beyond data transfer speed as important too.
 
good, I guess if I really want speed I should get a diskless NAS and drop an ssd in it too,thanks
f0u
 
shinegotitwe said:
good, I guess if I really want speed I should get a diskless NAS and drop an ssd in it too,thanksImage
Click to expand...

If you actually use the stuff stored on it semi-regularly, then the SSD has the benefit of low latency, so it is snappy almost like you are opening files off of your own local disk. If all you use it for is backing up once a day or once a week (or whatever) using something like time capsule, and you rarely read the data from it, then I agree with the above poster that SSD doesn't add much benefit.

Of course, I also like the reduced heat and noise of the SSD.

Edit: here's an article discussing some of the benefits of SSD in a NAS: http://www.tweaktown.com/blogs/Tyle...-ssd-performance-in-nas-appliances/index.html.
 
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