Time Capsule in an 802.11g environment

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forksforks
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
Hey guys - long time lurker here! We have a couple of macs around the house, but they're all got 802.11g - no n's here! Is time capsule still usable with g? Because backups are done behind-the-scenes, the wireless wouldn't have to be too fast, right? Or would the whole operation just be painfully slow?



Thanks!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 5
    viconiviconi Posts: 2member
    Should work fine, I have both n and g macs and pc's and time capsule wotks great
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  • Reply 2 of 5
    swingswing Posts: 52member
    It will work ok as a NAS hard drive. But Time Machine and Apple Backup will be painfully slow if you want to use either to back up to the Time Capsule.



    There is a very large difference between a 802.11n MB or MBP and a 802.11g PB backing up to my 1 TB Time Capsule via Time Machine. With similar-sized data sets the MB and MBP take about 1/5 the time it takes my PB. I do not care much because I intend to install a RAID 1 or RAID 5 to the Time Capsule and then conduct irregular backups from that over to the Time Capsule. But after my experience with the Time Capsule I will do this sooner rather than later.



    And of course, the speed differential may also have something to do with the different processor speeds, etc.



    EDIT: I think the difference between the n and g environments with a MB, MBP and PB is probably much greater than the 1/5 I mentioned above. I have not conducted a scientific test and am reticent to state hyperbole.
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  • Reply 3 of 5
    forksforks Posts: 2member
    Thanks for the replies . Yeah, I was going to use Time Machine with two or three machines, but now I'm so sure if g will be fast enough. Is it just the automated backups that are slow? What about just browsing time machine?



    Thanks
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  • Reply 4 of 5
    kingofsomewherehotkingofsomewherehot Posts: 4,185member
    It'll work just fine as a "g" device.

    The initial back up will be EXTREMELY slow (it copies everything)... it'll probably take on the order of 12-24 hours depending on how much "stuff" you have to back up. After that, backups are only of what has been CHANGED since the last one, and the speed will probably be acceptable to you.

    Browsing at "g" speeds will work just fine text files and such will seem instantaneous... you can even listen to mp3 files over "g" without problem... video won't work unless it's been compressed to youtube standards



    You could consider plugging in via ethernet for the initial back-ups... that will speed things up by a factor of 10 or better!
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  • Reply 5 of 5
    swingswing Posts: 52member
    Just browsing TM via g is slower than via n, but not nearly as annoying as with the g and n difference in the actual backup process.



    And, as mentioned by KingOfSomewhereHot, browsing TC via g works fine. Aside from very large files the speed is fine.



    By the way, with TM you can exclude some files from the TM backup. I exclude many system files and save loads of space and time.
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