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    Apple Airport Extreme question

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by corujo712, Jan 4, 2009.

  1. corujo712

    corujo712 Notebook Evangelist

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    Say i have two macbooks connected to an airport extreme (i haven't actually got one yet), and i connect an external hard drive to the airport.

    I want to share my external hard drive through my network. Just wondering how fast are the transfer speeds from the hard drive to the macbook using wireless? (ie copying a movie 700mb etc from the hard drive connected to the airport to my macbook using wireless)
     
    corujo712, Jan 4, 2009
    #1
  2. circa86

    circa86 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    fast enough, especially if all the machines on the network are N based, and even if they aren't, unless you are dealing with multi-gigabyte files often, you shouldn't run into any hiccups at all, in fact, you could easily store all that data on the attached HDD and just access it wirelessly, opening up movies or whatever directly off that shared volume.

    you can easily share the HDD with PC's as well.
     
    circa86, Jan 4, 2009
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  3. corujo712

    corujo712 Notebook Evangelist

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    Is it as fast as usb 2.0? or faster?
     
    corujo712, Jan 4, 2009
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  4. ltcommander_data

    ltcommander_data Notebook Deity

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    It's virtually impossible for a WiFi n network to be faster than USB 2.0 given that USB 2.0 is rated at a theoretical 480Mb/s while even the fastest 802.11n networks only advertise 300Mb/s under ideal conditions. A more realistic 802.11n data rate is probably closer to 50Mb/s at 10m (if I remember router reviews properly) which is pretty good considering DVD bit rate is around 10Mb/s, and I'm pretty sure most Divx/Xvid movies have lower bit rates than this.
     
    ltcommander_data, Jan 5, 2009
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  5. circa86

    circa86 Notebook Virtuoso NBR Reviewer

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    theoretically it is not as fast, and in practice your network is usually doing quite a bit, so it should be slightly slower or very similar.

    it is definitely fast enough to play back video directly over wi-fi, but Gigabit ethernet is significantly faster, either way though, unless you are using a Time Capsule you are always dealing with your slowest connection, whether it be ethernet, wifi, or USB. I have played back HD content over my wifi connection, with multiple computers connected to the same router.
     
    circa86, Jan 5, 2009
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  6. ValkyrieLenneth

    ValkyrieLenneth Notebook Evangelist

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    It can't be faster than USB 2.0. But much faster than 802.11g.
     
    ValkyrieLenneth, Jan 5, 2009
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  7. corujo712

    corujo712 Notebook Evangelist

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    i have 4 laptops connected to wireless so you can watch divx/avi files without any lag (while all laptops are surfing the net)?
     
    corujo712, Jan 5, 2009
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