Is the new Airport Extreme fast enough for wirelesd HD use?

[Learjet035]

I have a newer MBP and was curious if the new airport was fast enough to transfer live...
iTunes Music?? I have 40GB that I can't keep on the laptop, so will it stream smooth?

Photos?? Both iPhoto and larger RAW stuff in lightroom??

Video?

Just curious as to the limitations of it since it's using USB and I'm running FireWire800

Thanks all

 

[synth3tik]

You should be fine. I have my backup drive hooked up to my airport. It runs slower, but that is backing up gigs of data daily.

 

[aristobrat]

I have a newer MBP and was curious if the new airport was fast enough to transfer live...

FWIW, if the drive connected to your AEBS is HFS, if you turn off journaling on it (which you'll have to do while it's plugged into a Mac), you'll get faster throughput on it.

The fastest I've been able to make my AEBS+share USB drive scoot along at is 6 MB/s. If you're used to FireWire 800, that might be a shock.

 

[Learjet035]

Ok, cool, thanks for the info!

 

[Chris F]

On my N only network with 7.2.1 FW I get approximately 4MB/s sequential write and about 8MB/s sequential read. The speed is limited by the processor in the AEBS. You will not see higher speeds even if you connect directly using Gigabit using Jumbo frames. I use my network drive for archival purposes (iTunes library etc..) and its more then fast enough for streaming video and music which appears to be your desired application.

For direct video editing (iMovie) and other really drive intensive tasks I would strongly suggest a locally connected drive (eSATA or FW800) or the internal drive.

 

[colorspace]

Chris/anyone,

Any idea of what transfer speeds you get on a mixed network (n and g)? Would be very useful to know.

Thanks

 

[Learjet035]

K thanks Chris, good stuff!

 

[Chris F]

Chris/anyone,

Any idea of what transfer speeds you get on a mixed network (n and g)? Would be very useful to know.

Thanks

Unsure since I use a pure N network right now. However the router will step the speed down to G levels if there are G devices transmitting so you will probably see typical G speeds of ~20Mbps (~2MB/s) or so both up and down for much of the time while you have the G device turned on. It's still more then fast enough for video streaming and music playback though copies and other file operations over the network will be annoyingly slow for anything larger then a few MB in size.

 

[aristobrat]

FWIW, before I setup separate B/G and N networks, when a B/G device connected to my N network, I noticed the N devices dropped from a connect speed of 300mbps down to 160mbps.

Definitely slower than N, but not as slow as G's 54mbps connect speed.