AC wifi vs Gigabit Thunderbolt Ethernet adapter

[dsgnr]

Hi everyone,
I have the latest MBPr 15" and the latest Airport Extreme (802.11ac). Has anyone managed to compare the differences of internet network speeds between the AC wifi and the thunderbolt gigabit ethernet adapter?

I have a Synology NAS on the network for backups/archives etc so would like to get the best speed I can out of it.

Thanks
Dan

 

[AFEPPL]

Yes, WiFi is not even close... You'll get 130MB/s vs maybe 30MB/s.. on AC.
Test if for yourself with black magic and select just point it at your device.

 

[mildocjr]

A physical connection will always out perform a wireless connection but didn't think it was as bad as what AFEPPL posted. Good to know.

 

[dsgnr]

This is what my AC is performing like. If ethernet is faster then I'll be very pleased!

 

[boast]

I don't think backups/archiving is really time sensitive. AC should be good enough.

 

[dsgnr]

Well it's not just backups and archives, sorry. I'm a web developer and I use the nas drive as a personal git server, as well as an rsync server from my website hosting.

Also holds customer files etc which I pull down to work on.

I've been happy with the speed so far but I've just changed my workspace around to a more permanent position where I am able to use Ethernet if I wanted

 

[AFEPPL]

Yeah, it will hit in the 130MB/s range.

But it does depend on the file size and what else is consuming the bandwidth... mines running 32MB on read while streaming Netflix too to a DS414+.

 

[mildocjr]

TBH if you are just pulling down projects that are < 100 Mb in size, it shouldn't be too much of an issue, now when you get over that, you might have time to get a water from the fridge. If you use Ethernet your speeds will pick up a lot, but even then you want to determine if your wireless speed or your hard drive speed is the bottleneck. 5400 RPM drives only transfer at an average of 200 Mbps and 7200 RPM drives transfer at 240 Mbps. After you do a field test you'll be able to determine if you should stay wireless or go wired using the info AFEPPL gave you.