Hi gang,
I posted on this yesterday but this question is slightly different...
I have 3 computers at home:
1. my wife's PC cabled in my new airport extreme "pre-n" base station
2. my MacBook Pro 17" (1 month old) with an internal "n" wireless capability
3. my daughters 1.83 ghz iMac with built in "g" wireless capability
4. I also have an airport express plugged into my stereo to run iTunes which I assume is "g"
Plugged into my airport extreme is a printer (via cat5) with networking ability, an xbox 360 (cat 5), my wife's pc (cat 5) and a western digital hard drive (via usb)
I understand my daughters g iMac and the airport express is slowing down my airport extreme but not sure if it is worth trying to fix with some exotic two router set up. Put simply it really doesn't seem that bad.
My uses for the internet are primarily ...
Net Surf
I am an attorney and do a lot of net surfing ... both legal research type stuff and fun stuff (which lately has been haunting mac web sites trying to learn OS X) I occaisionally download large files but that is mainly just software updates and the like. It seems to be just fine as is for these purposes. I also have a vpn tunnel to my office windows station and the speed on that is fine. I really only use it to go in .. check e-mail .. do some billings and perhaps e-mail my home account a file or two and then get out. I don't actually work on the vpn (i.e. edit word, powerpoint, excel docs)
Access Airport Extreme USB Drive
Accessing Airport extreme (APX) drive. I've got our massive iTunes library on it. No way I can put 40gb of music on my laptop. I also am putting some larger video and data files on it to free up space on the macbook. I don't have my daughter's iMac hooked up to it in that she has more than enough room on her machine and I don't have my wife's machine hooked up to it either. Its really just 320gb extra storage for my laptop. I also, on occasion, disconnect it from the airport extreme base and mount it directly to the macbook pro for the purpose of running superduper. (as an aside I read that if I take it off the network and mount it directly to my macbook pro WITHOUT first dismounting the network drive from my macbook pro the world implodes, cats live with dogs, and my hard drive will crash. I'm careful to not do that)
That is it for me.
My daughter doesn't have access to the network drive but uses the wireless connection to surf and e-mail, etc...
The Airport express is not connected via cat 5 but instead plugged into the wall with the mini jack pluged into one of my stereo inputs.
I'm wondering if maybe for my needs I don't need to bother and should leave things be. Maybe if I had the N speed I could do superduper without yanking the drive off APX and plugging into my Macbook but that really is not a lot of trouble. Besides, I have my doubts that Airport Extreme could write any faster if my connection sped up anyway based on other threads I'm reading - Airport Extreme's brain simply can't run the network and write to the HD very fast.
Another thought is, what if I simply turn off airport on my daughters computer and unplug the airport express when I need super speed. It probably wouldn't be that often. Will the APX then jump up to n speed?
I posted on this yesterday but this question is slightly different...
I have 3 computers at home:
1. my wife's PC cabled in my new airport extreme "pre-n" base station
2. my MacBook Pro 17" (1 month old) with an internal "n" wireless capability
3. my daughters 1.83 ghz iMac with built in "g" wireless capability
4. I also have an airport express plugged into my stereo to run iTunes which I assume is "g"
Plugged into my airport extreme is a printer (via cat5) with networking ability, an xbox 360 (cat 5), my wife's pc (cat 5) and a western digital hard drive (via usb)
I understand my daughters g iMac and the airport express is slowing down my airport extreme but not sure if it is worth trying to fix with some exotic two router set up. Put simply it really doesn't seem that bad.
My uses for the internet are primarily ...
Net Surf
I am an attorney and do a lot of net surfing ... both legal research type stuff and fun stuff (which lately has been haunting mac web sites trying to learn OS X) I occaisionally download large files but that is mainly just software updates and the like. It seems to be just fine as is for these purposes. I also have a vpn tunnel to my office windows station and the speed on that is fine. I really only use it to go in .. check e-mail .. do some billings and perhaps e-mail my home account a file or two and then get out. I don't actually work on the vpn (i.e. edit word, powerpoint, excel docs)
Access Airport Extreme USB Drive
Accessing Airport extreme (APX) drive. I've got our massive iTunes library on it. No way I can put 40gb of music on my laptop. I also am putting some larger video and data files on it to free up space on the macbook. I don't have my daughter's iMac hooked up to it in that she has more than enough room on her machine and I don't have my wife's machine hooked up to it either. Its really just 320gb extra storage for my laptop. I also, on occasion, disconnect it from the airport extreme base and mount it directly to the macbook pro for the purpose of running superduper. (as an aside I read that if I take it off the network and mount it directly to my macbook pro WITHOUT first dismounting the network drive from my macbook pro the world implodes, cats live with dogs, and my hard drive will crash. I'm careful to not do that)
That is it for me.
My daughter doesn't have access to the network drive but uses the wireless connection to surf and e-mail, etc...
The Airport express is not connected via cat 5 but instead plugged into the wall with the mini jack pluged into one of my stereo inputs.
I'm wondering if maybe for my needs I don't need to bother and should leave things be. Maybe if I had the N speed I could do superduper without yanking the drive off APX and plugging into my Macbook but that really is not a lot of trouble. Besides, I have my doubts that Airport Extreme could write any faster if my connection sped up anyway based on other threads I'm reading - Airport Extreme's brain simply can't run the network and write to the HD very fast.
Another thought is, what if I simply turn off airport on my daughters computer and unplug the airport express when I need super speed. It probably wouldn't be that often. Will the APX then jump up to n speed?