Time Capsule - POST YOUR PERFORMANCE

[mmoran27]

1) It is nearly silent but you can hear the fan at all times and definitley hear the disk copying a file to it.

2) Wireless performance is definitely slower than airport extreme.

3) Wired performance sucks and this is why it is going back to the store. Wired performance in the range of 2-3Mbps whereas my NAS throughput is 17Mbps for the same file.

It appears that the Time Capsule is pausing every couple of seconds where throughput drops to zero for a second or so and then continues. This was repeatable every time (Does on Wired Gigabit or wireless).

I cannot believe noone has reported this. Or is this unit defective?

I exchanged the defective unit and performance on the unit is much better.

2) Transferring the combo update for 10.5.2 yields 15-16 Mbps
3) Same over wireless is about 6.5 Mbps

The pauses no longer exist on this one. The last one must have bad sectors on the disk or something. Apple swapped it on sight in the store no questions asked.

 

[mmoran27]

Come on people, Lets post some benchmarks for the TimeCapsule

Come on people, Lets post some benchmarks for the TimeCapsule

 

[Yvan256]

Come on people, Lets post some benchmarks for the TimeCapsule

I have yet to setup mine. How would you benchmark it (aside from timing the copy of a huge file)?

 

[Virgil-TB2]

I have yet to setup mine. How would you benchmark it (aside from timing the copy of a huge file)?

Yeah, ...

1) post exactly how you are benchmarking so we can replicate the process and compare numbers.

2) are you talking time machine backup or regular file transfers because they are not the same thing.

3) My own (subjective) experience so far is that wired backups are fine but that wireless connectivity is far worse than the old linksys "g" gear I replaced it with and has periodic drop-outs where the devices are trying to find each other.

In other words the exact opposite of your experience I guess.

 

[Future Blues]

Performance has been pretty good after I set up a sysctl.conf file with the following in it:

net.inet.tcp.delayed_ack=0

It has improved my transfer speeds significantly (numbers coming to the blog soon).

I've also managed to softly crash the TC (make it completely unresponsive, while the light is still green) by canceling a large (6Gb) wireless TM backup and then attempting to do something else with the TC disk. I had to unplug it to get it working again.

Other than that, no problems to report.

 

[Squelch]

My wireless was horrible at first too, and I called Apple Care. The guy there told me to switch it to channel 9 instead of what it was on, (11, by automatic) and I now get great performance all through the house. I asked him why 9, and he just said that it's what all the techs there use, and he didn't know any technical reason.

So try channel 9. It might help.

 

[Evo-L]

My wireless was horrible at first too, and I called Apple Care. The guy there told me to switch it to channel 9 instead of what it was on, (11, by automatic) and I now get great performance all through the house. I asked him why 9, and he just said that it's what all the techs there use, and he didn't know any technical reason.

So try channel 9. It might help.

How do you change the channel?

 

[skorpien]

Transferring an 8.52 GB folder from my wired PC (10/100 base ethernet) to my MBP through TC (wireless N only 5 GHz) and I'm getting a fairly consistent rate of ~6.5 MB/s FWIW (that's ~52.4 Mbps if I've converted right)

I know it's not exactly the best way to do a benchmark, but I thought this might provide some idea of performance?

 

[The Stig]

I haven't tried Time capsule yet but I have tried a N Base Station with a HD connected through USB and it was slow. Here were my results:

through airport I get a write speed of about: 2.5 - 3.5 MB/s

through the base station connect with Enet: pretty much the same.

Connect to my PC through enet to base to MB (airport) shared: slower still about 1 MB/s

Straight into my MB with USB - 16.4 MB/s

Straight into my MB with firewire - 29.5 MB/s

Is Time capsule pretty much the same or does it transfer files faster?

Thanks,

the Stig

See my full post at:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/281280/

 

[Celeron]

My wireless was horrible at first too, and I called Apple Care. The guy there told me to switch it to channel 9 instead of what it was on, (11, by automatic) and I now get great performance all through the house. I asked him why 9, and he just said that it's what all the techs there use, and he didn't know any technical reason.

So try channel 9. It might help.

You shouldn't use channel 9, it overlaps with channel 6 and 11. Really, with wireless, the only channels that should be used at 1, 6, and 11. These don't overlap with each over.

By choosing 9 you're asking for interference from any nearby access points that are using channel 6 or 11.

 

[dalvin200]

How do you guys see your transfer rates?

is there an apps that tracks this? or some math formula?

 

[mmoran27]

I think you mean Mbps not MB/s

I think you mean to say that you are getting a transfer speed of 6.5 Mbps and not MB/s, correct?


See CNET performance review

http://reviews.cnet.com/network-storage/apple-time-capsule-1tb/4505-3382_7-32818587.html?tag=prod.txt.1

Transferring an 8.52 GB folder from my wired PC (10/100 base ethernet) to my MBP through TC (wireless N only 5 GHz) and I'm getting a fairly consistent rate of ~6.5 MB/s FWIW (that's ~52.4 Mbps if I've converted right)

I know it's not exactly the best way to do a benchmark, but I thought this might provide some idea of performance?

 

[skorpien]

I think you mean to say that you are getting a transfer speed of 6.5 Mbps and not MB/s, correct?


See CNET performance review

http://reviews.cnet.com/network-storage/apple-time-capsule-1tb/4505-3382_7-32818587.html?tag=prod.txt.1

Well I was using Activity Monitor's Network tab, and unless I'm mistaken, that uses Mega Bytes (MB) per second, not Mega Bits (Mb) per second. Let's just say that it took my computer about 20 minutes to transfer the folder. Take 8.2 GB (roughly 8397 MB if you multiply by 1024 MB/GB) and divide that by 1200 seconds (number of seconds in 20 minutes), you get about 7 MB/s. So, despite that review, it seems my network is indeed transferring at a sustained 6.5 MB/s... This is also computer to computer (not downloading it from the net), without any other processes running (as soon as I start browsing, downloading or anything else requiring network access, that rate drops).

Edit: Also, the part of the review that you're referring to actually measures the read/write speeds of the internal hdd of the TC. If you look at the lower bar graphs about the network throughput, my results fall within the range of the results and don't deviate much at all.

 

[gnasher729]

My wireless was horrible at first too, and I called Apple Care. The guy there told me to switch it to channel 9 instead of what it was on, (11, by automatic) and I now get great performance all through the house. I asked him why 9, and he just said that it's what all the techs there use, and he didn't know any technical reason.

Your neighbor might be using Channel 11 and cause interference, and changing your own equipment to any channel other than 11 might help. Unless you have a neighbor interfering on Channel 11 on the left side, and another neighbor who followed Apple Care advice and switched to Channel 9 on the right side, then you need to switch to Channel 7

 

[saltyzoo]

My wireless was horrible at first too, and I called Apple Care. The guy there told me to switch it to channel 9 instead of what it was on, (11, by automatic) and I now get great performance all through the house. I asked him why 9, and he just said that it's what all the techs there use, and he didn't know any technical reason.

So try channel 9. It might help.

This is full of awesome win! 5 years from now there will still be people hard setting their wiFi routers to channel 9 because of this.

 

[HLdan]

I think you mean to say that you are getting a transfer speed of 6.5 Mbps and not MB/s, correct?


See CNET performance review

http://reviews.cnet.com/network-storage/apple-time-capsule-1tb/4505-3382_7-32818587.html?tag=prod.txt.1

I think you are mistaking bits for bytes. I have the 1TB TC and my transfer rates are at 60M(bits)/sec which is equals 7.5M(Bytes)/sec.

The math is to multiply by a factor of 8 which would be 7.5MB X 8.

 

[mmoran27]

I think you are right, I just grabbed the number from ISTAT without thinking.

I think the results are more like 6.5 MBps and 52 Mbps. I think CNET got it wrong also because they also list Mbps in both benchmarks.

I think you are mistaking bits for bytes. I have the 1TB TC and my transfer rates are at 60M(bits)/sec which is equals 7.5M(Bytes)/sec.

The math is to multiply by a factor of 8 which would be 7.5MB X 8.

 

[Squelch]

How do you change the channel?

Open Airport Utility in your Utilities folder. Click on the Time Capsule. Click manual Setup. Click on Wireless. Click the double arrow next to "Channel:" and change it to 9. Restart. Enjoy.

You shouldn't use channel 9, it overlaps with channel 6 and 11. Really, with wireless, the only channels that should be used at 1, 6, and 11. These don't overlap with each over.

By choosing 9 you're asking for interference from any nearby access points that are using channel 6 or 11.

That's funny, because both my neighbors are on 6, and I was using 11. After switching to 9, I get much better reception.

Your neighbor might be using Channel 11 and cause interference, and changing your own equipment to any channel other than 11 might help. Unless you have a neighbor interfering on Channel 11 on the left side, and another neighbor who followed Apple Care advice and switched to Channel 9 on the right side, then you need to switch to Channel 7

Actually, both of my neighbors are on channel 6, one with an open WRT-54G, and the other with a closed network that I haven't bothered with.

 

[RockTheGlobe]

Channels 7 and 9 aren't working for me... My Net connection is still slow. Any other suggestions?

 

[toddbee]

mine is slow too. any suggestions? is this product a lemon?

 

[Virgil-TB2]

mine is slow too. any suggestions? is this product a lemon?

get a free utility called "iStumber" from versiontracker.com.

With it you can see all the wireless setups within range and what channels they are using. Set the router to use a channel no one else is using. On the other hand the standard "automatic" channel setting in the TC does this all by itself.

 

[toddbee]

i used istumbler. thanks for the recommend. it seems slow when connected via ethernet too

 

[ljones]

My performance seems to have dropped after the update. i was getting about 2MB not Mbps. Now it's jumping around in the 400kb range. WTF.

** Aparently, running iStumbler in the background will cause this. All seems normal. I can't reach my high on speedtest.net though...

 

[The Stig]

What kind of data transfer rates are people getting connecting over N when sending or receiving files???

The Stig

 

[digitalfx]

My performance seems to have dropped after the update. i was getting about 2MB not Mbps. Now it's jumping around in the 400kb range. WTF.

** Aparently, running iStumbler in the background will cause this. All seems normal. I can't reach my high on speedtest.net though...

According to iStat I get a max speed of 2MB/s...it fluctuates between 400KB/s and 2MB/s.

I am on 5Ghz N Only.

BTW- The only option I have on channel is "AUTOMATIC". I am unable to change the channel on N only