Hi there.
We currently have 3 Airport Expresses making our network, one that's connected to the modem, the other two are connected wireless/wired to speakers for AirPlay-purposes.
Now, we'd like to change the base-station we currently have with an Airport Extreme, for better performance and so we can use that Airport Express for other speakers in the house. But I have a couple of question.
First off, we'd like to have a network-hard drive for backups (We don't have any Macs, so no need for the Time Machine-features). Now, since it's for backup, it should have rather high speeds. Let's say the computer that's backing up is wired with LAN to the Airport Extreme. What would be the fastest option? Opt for a Airport Time Capsule (since it's only 100 for 2TB) (assuming you can access it via Windows), wire a external hard drive via USB 2.0 to a Airport Extreme, or wire an external hard drive to the Airport Extreme via a LAN-cable? What is the bottleneck, the LAN, USB 2.0, the CPU of the pc, the writing speed of the HD, ... ?
Secondly, we have a printer that's just connected to a Windows PC atm. It hasn't got WiFi, but is has a LAN. If we connect this to the network, I presume we will be able to set it up as a network printer and print to it from Windows. However, since it's an Apple-network, can you use AirPrint from iOS devices as well?
Thanks!
We currently have 3 Airport Expresses making our network, one that's connected to the modem, the other two are connected wireless/wired to speakers for AirPlay-purposes.
Now, we'd like to change the base-station we currently have with an Airport Extreme, for better performance and so we can use that Airport Express for other speakers in the house. But I have a couple of question.
First off, we'd like to have a network-hard drive for backups (We don't have any Macs, so no need for the Time Machine-features). Now, since it's for backup, it should have rather high speeds. Let's say the computer that's backing up is wired with LAN to the Airport Extreme. What would be the fastest option? Opt for a Airport Time Capsule (since it's only 100 for 2TB) (assuming you can access it via Windows), wire a external hard drive via USB 2.0 to a Airport Extreme, or wire an external hard drive to the Airport Extreme via a LAN-cable? What is the bottleneck, the LAN, USB 2.0, the CPU of the pc, the writing speed of the HD, ... ?
Secondly, we have a printer that's just connected to a Windows PC atm. It hasn't got WiFi, but is has a LAN. If we connect this to the network, I presume we will be able to set it up as a network printer and print to it from Windows. However, since it's an Apple-network, can you use AirPrint from iOS devices as well?
Thanks!