[apollo11]

Airport based network in a domestic situation composed of

Airport Extreme base station type n with attached USB powered 500 gig Seagate drive and a ADSL modem

1 Tb Timecapsule dual band

Airport Express type n

220.3 Mb file copied from MBP to Seagate took about 2 mins.

Straight after the same file has taken 15 minutes to copy from MBP to the Timecapsule

Why should this be?

Networking is a Black Art!

In anticipation of your help, thank you.

[Cold Warrior]

how are your airport extreme, time capsule, and airport express all connected to each other? What station is your MBP on?

[Simon]

Originally Posted by apollo11 

220.3 Mb file copied from MBP to Seagate took about 2 mins.

Straight after the same file has taken 15 minutes to copy from MBP to the Timecapsule

When you copy directly to the disk you are usually limited by disk performance or in the case of USB2 by the bus.

However, when you copy to a disk that's attached to an AP Extreme or TC (NAS) you're limited by the fact that the AP Extreme or TC have to translate the AFP. Consumer-grade NAS solutions have notoriously slow CPUs and hence achieve much lower transfer rates compared to when you attach a disk directly to a computer with eSATA, FW, or USB (DAS).

In order to rule out wifi issues, you should try the transfers while having the Mac connected to the AP Extreme or TC directly through Gigabit Ethernet. The bottleneck you'll see there is the CPU in the AP Extreme or TC. That will define the maximum performance you can expect from your consumer NAS setup.

For better throughput you'll have to either go for more professional NAS solutions or back to DAS.

[apollo11]

The Timecapsule and Express and Extreme base station are wirelessly linked & are set up as "extend a network" . All are "n" protocol, MBP is on channel 1 selected automatically.

Extreme base station Signal / Noise: -51 dBm / -96 dBm , Transmit Rate: 130.

Thanks

[apollo11]

Thank you Simon & Cold Warrrior. Ethernet connection to Time capsule renders a file transfer to minutes compared to hours wirelessly.

I would expect that?

The Time capsule is sat on a metal safe. Will this be dampening the signal significantly?

[Simon]

Yep, a safe could be a problem. Always keep all wifi routers as far away from metallic structure as possible.

Are you using WDS to "extend" your network? It would be best to connect the TC and AP Extreme over Ethernet if possible. WDS always comes with a performance penalty. My guess would be that's part of the reason for the discrepancy between the throughput to the TC and the AP Extreme.

[apollo11]

Thanks for your help Simon,
Extreme base station is not WDS. I'm not sure what WDS means.

I'll move the TC away from the safe.

Thanks

Anoop

[Simon]

WDS = wireless distribution system = extending your wifi network by connecting several base stations over wireless, IOW not with Ethernet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireles...ibution_System