More Time Capsule and Bridging Questions

[ks-man]

I've been reading a bunch of threads here and have tried different things and started over and am completely confusing myself and hope that somebody can explain what this all means.

I've seen many people advocate using a router (mine is a linksys WRT54gs) as the main router and setting up the Time Capsule in bridge mode to "take advantage of wireless n speeds). I think I now have it set up this way (I don't remember how I set up bridge only so if somebody can say where that is I'd appreciate it).

My main question comes from what the benefit is to using n-only vs. mixed. Obviously N has faster speeds, but is this going to be recognized in browsing the internet/downloading files off the internet, or only from accessing hard drives on TC (either internal or external by USB). I thought I would have faster speeds on the internet but I don't understand how to tell my computers to use the TC for internet connectivity rather than the linksys. Am I thinking about this wrong?

The other problem I seem to be having (though I need to confirm this when I get home later) is that I am getting very shaky connection to the externally connected hard drive. I don't know if it is a range issue as I could connect when I was right next to the TC but I couldn't when I went one level upstairs. I didn't think that would be it as another computer up on a higher level (much further away) still could connect to the internet.

Do you need to be much closer to the routers to access a hard drive than you do to connect to the internet?

My head is swimming with all these terms that I don't understand and I've broken and repaired my network a bunch of times (before I tried to use the TC as the primary router and the linksys as the bridge in mixed mode but that seemed to cause a ton of problems).

Any clarification on what the goal of all this is and how I will know if I'm successful would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[ks-man]

Just went back and read some old threads again and I think I may have figured out at least one of my problems.

I now see that the Linksys's LAN port should be connected to the TC's WAN port (I could have sworn somewhere else it said LAN to LAN) and that the TC should have a different name than the Linksys network.

I'll try this when I get home. I just want to confirm that if I do it this way with an external USB connected to the TC that a device connected to the Linksys SSID would still be able to connect to the TC's external USB (and the TC internal hard drive).

Thanks.

 

[skorpien]

Just went back and read some old threads again and I think I may have figured out at least one of my problems.

I now see that the Linksys's LAN port should be connected to the TC's WAN port (I could have sworn somewhere else it said LAN to LAN) and that the TC should have a different name than the Linksys network.

I'll try this when I get home. I just want to confirm that if I do it this way with an external USB connected to the TC that a device connected to the Linksys SSID would still be able to connect to the TC's external USB (and the TC internal hard drive).

Thanks.

Yes, it will. If the TC is set in bridge mode, it will be running on the same subnet as the Linksys so that all devices connected to either router will be able to access each other and any devices attached to the TC (including the HD) regardless of what SSIDs you give each one. And since it isn't a roaming network, each access point requires a unique SSID.

Those posts that you read that may have confused you were probably mine. At the time of posting, I didn't realize that the WAN port on the TC automatically switched functions when set as a bridge as I only had experience bridging my Linksys. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.

 

[ks-man]

Yes, it will. If the TC is set in bridge mode, it will be running on the same subnet as the Linksys so that all devices connected to either router will be able to access each other and any devices attached to the TC (including the HD) regardless of what SSIDs you give each one. And since it isn't a roaming network, each access point requires a unique SSID.

Those posts that you read that may have confused you were probably mine. At the time of posting, I didn't realize that the WAN port on the TC automatically switched functions when set as a bridge as I only had experience bridging my Linksys. I apologize for any confusion I may have caused.

Thanks Skorpien,

Last night I messed around and got everything up and running. I now have two SSIDs but all computers can access the HDs. I don't notice any difference in internet performance when connecting a N device to the N only router vs. the b/g router but I still figure it is better to use that one.

I'm also not that impressed with accessing files off of the network drive as I was hoping to have all computers use the same Iphoto, Itunes and Microsoft Money files off of the drive so I didn't have to keep it on all my computer hard drives but there seems to be a considerable lag when using these files vs. having them locally on the computer. I wonder if I was doing this through wired ethernet if the performance would be better.

Regardless, thanks for all the help as I do now have the setup I was hoping for even though the performance isn't quite there yet. I'm planning on activating Time Machine on my MBA pretty soon now which is the biggest benefit to this setup.

 

[skorpien]

I'm glad to hear that it's finally set up how you want. Unfortunately you won't notice any differences in speeds in regards to the internet due to the fact that most ISP providers don't provide a fast enough connection to be able to see a difference. For example, my connection is only 5 Mbps, which is slower than even 802.11b wifi (11 Mbps).

You would get a faster access rate with ethernet, but it will still be quite slower than if an external HD was connected directly to the computer or having the files on an internal disk. It's not just Time Capsule though. Access times are a lot faster on internal disks or disks connected with USB or FW. You also have to take into account that the TC HDD spins down when not in use, so that may increase access times as well. You could always do a test and compare wired and wireless to see if wired would be better to use though.