Help with selecting Time Capsule or Airport Extreme

[theBostonian]

I went into the Apple Store today to buy an AirPort Extreme and an external hard drive. I came across the Time Capsule and considered it briefly; as there were no Apple geniuses around to help, I have had to come on here with a few questions.

How fast would the data transfer between my MBP and the TC, is it comparable to USB 3 or 2? Is it possible to encrypt the TC completely or would I have to use an encrypted container for protection?

Finally, is it possible that there may be an APE refresh soon? I'm interested in having the ac technology option but at the same time I'd prefer to have the AirPort rather than another router.

Thanks for your assistance!

 

[FreakinEurekan]

I would expect speed to disk on the TC to be faster than an AirPort Extreme with external disk, since the disk on the AE would be limited to USB 2.0 speeds - although that's still fast enough to outpace a wireless connection, so if you're connecting wirelessly you probably won't notice the difference.

As far as actual throughput, assuming your MBP is connected wirelessly on the 5GHz network, you should expect near-network speeds with file transfers (close to 150Mbps). If you're wired via Ethernet it'll be faster.

 

[theBostonian]

You raise some interesting points... Maybe I'll return the unopened AirPort Extreme and go with another, more recently released router.

Thanks for the insight.

 

[flynz4]

I use our Time Capsules exclusively for backup destinations. We have a dedicated TC for each of our iMacs... plus one more dedicated to all of the laptops. We do not use them as a regular NAS.

If you are looking for wireless backups of your machines... I think the TC's are the best available.

We also use an Airport Extreme as our main router in the house. Keeping it "all Apple" keeps things simple and robust. Back when we had a mix-and-match of different network equipment... we often had to reboot components to keep our network running. Now everything is rock solid.

/Jim

 

[blueroom]

I use an AEBS & a Synology NAS. IMHO is an excellent combination.