Thanks for the comments all of you; as I suspected the gig switch won't help much so I'll just stick with the 10/100 one I already have.
I realize that using a cable for the laptops would backup faster via Time Machine; but then I"m only backing up /Users anyway. The apps and operating system get cloned using CarbonCopyCloner every couple of weeks to a FW drive partition; so the hourly Time Machine backups are pretty small; and adding a cable to the laptop cuts down on usability quite a lot; I used to do this before we got the 802.11n Airport Extreme and day to day needs aren't enough to make using the cable again worth it even though it is faster. The router is inside our RV in the comms closet; but has external amplified antennas for WiFi reception and the 3G air card. We typically can see a couple dozen wifi access points in the router control panel, all the ones inside the park as well as just about anything within a quarter mile or so; I've been amazed how many more access points you see with an external amplified antenna. The WiFiRanger router has 802.11n but only does the 2.4 GHz band; I think I'll experiment with hooking up the Airport Extreme in 5 GHz mode and putting the devices that work on 5 GHz on it leaving the 2.4 for the iPhones. That at least splits up the wifi bandwidth used between two different access points; that will alleviate congestion a little bit. I think I'll pass on upgrading the Airport at this point since I'm mostly looking at internal LAN bandwidth anyway. I may consider the dual router strategy as well once we get situated in the coach; but that presents problems if the wife has to do any troubleshooting; she says that IT is my responsibility and while she is pretty computer smart for a non sysadmin, she really doesn't want to have to muck with it. Hence, the dual router solution (while it would work fine) is pretty much out unless there is a huge performance gain with it and I don't foresee that happening; it would be simpler to configure the actual LAN router since Airport Utility manages it and the interface is way more user friendly than the WiFiRanger's is but with the daily drivers on wireless there won't be much performance increase if at all. All of this equipment is being transplanted from our house into the RV; I moved the file server out to the rig the other day but had to put it on WiFi to the Airport Express still inside the house rather then cabled to the network;performance of Time Machine with both the mini and the laptops on the same wireless went to a crawl; I will be glad in a day or three when we complete the move and I can get the mini back on a cable. Unfortunately I have to re-IP everything since I use static IPs as much as possible; but that's the breaks I guess. We're so ready for this whole transition period to be over; everything is moved into the RV and we were supposed to leave the house today (closed last week) and take up residence at the local RV park for a couple weeks until we actually hit the road. However, nature intervened and I'm sure you've seen on the news about the really severe thunderstorms we had in the DC area last Friday with the associated power outages…which means the RV park has no power so we're camping out at the house until it does get power back. ----------------------------------------------- There are only three kinds of stress; your basic nuclear stress, cooking stress, and A$$hole stress. The key to their relationship is Jello. neil _______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
