At work we recently moved from an older building with offices and 100-baseT network to an open-plan cubicle farm with gigabit networking. In my group there are 8 iMacs and a couple Mac Pro servers used mainly for batch processing and to serve data via AFS shares. The improved network thruput is at least some compensation for the loss of windows that open, but the main benefit in practice has been that Screen Sharing is actually useful. My guess is that you will see significant improvements in data transfer rates, but you have to consider whether it will save you enough time to be worth the expense. The real benefit would come if it allows you do do things that are currently too painful.
As for Time Machine: with normal workloads, Time Machine backups spend more time on bookkeeping than on data transfer, so the faster network may not save you much time overall. The exception is if you are backing up lots of data (e.g., audio, video, numerical simulation results). I have a laptop that isn't allowed on the network so runs Time Machine on a USB drive. It sits next to an iMac that does TimeMachine backups to a network server. There isn't much difference in the clock times for backups of similar sizes. If there is a difference, it is that the iMac seems less bogged down while TM is running. On Sat, Nov 17, 2012 at 12:38 PM, Neil Laubenthal <[email protected]>wrote: > Hi; I wonder if anybody has made a similar transition to what I'm thinking > about…and if so was there any increase in overall throughput. > > My wife and I live in an RV and are thus dependent on either wifi from the > campground or our Verizon air card for external internet access. I can't > really do anything about that but most of our usage is internally between > our iPhone 4's (not 4s), two original iPads, and two MBP (one Retina and > one unibody) > > My current network uses a WiFi Ranger as the router and this can't really > be easily changed as it provides the ability to failover between wifi and > the air card as required. The WiFi Ranger has 10/100 ethernet. > > I currently have a 10/100 Linksys switch downstream of the WiFi Ranger and > all internal devices are hooked up to it. These include an Intel Mac Mini > (file server) with gigabit ethernet and an original Airport Extreme 802.11n > First Generation that only has 10/100 ethernet connections. The Airport is > in bridge mode with the router set as it's gateway. The two iPhone 4, two > original iPads, and two MBPs all connect via the Airport which is set in > 802.11n (802.11b/g compatible) mode. > > I did a speed check for file transfer from one of the MBPs to the Mini and > throughput is about 9.8 MB/sec…this compares pretty well with the 12.5 > MB/sec maximum for a 10/100 switch; so clearly I'm being limited by the > switches and not by the wifi throughput. > > I'm considering replacing the existing Airport with the latest version > which includes gigabit ethernet dual band (since the iPhones only do 2.4 > GHz and I don't know whether the iPad 1's do 2.4 only or have 5 GHz as > well)…along with this I would replace the switch with a gigabit switch. My > thinking is that this would give us much better throughput between the MBPs > and the server (Time Machine takes forever backing up to the Mini); > obviously external connectivity won't be helped by this but that's fixed > depending on how we're connecting at a particular parking spot. > > I have a couple of questions about this. As a long time Mac Consultant I'm > surprised that I never actually did this upgrade for any of my clients > before we went on the road full time…but I didn't…I'm not adverse to > spending money if it will help but would hate to spend 300 bucks upgrading > only to find out it doesn't make any difference. > > 1. Am I likely to see significantly better throughput internally to our > LAN if I make the above changes or am I just fighting physics? > > 2. Does the 10/100 router really make any difference for internal > communications? I'm thinking no since all of the internal connections are > via Bonjour anyway and since the gigabit switch that everything is > connected to would handle all of the internal traffic, only going to the > port connected to the router if it's an external internet request. > > 3. If my idea won't really give me any better service; is there anything > else I can do to improve performance? I suppose I could switch the Airport > to n only mode at 2.4 GHz but I don't think the b/g compatible mode really > affects throughput, or does it? My wife also has a g only Dell box she uses > for her part time job, but I can always turn on the g wifi in the WiFi > Ranger and have two internal networks, the Airport for all of the Apple > devices at n speed and the WiFi Ranger at g speed for the Windows machine. > > 4. If I do the dual wifi arrangement in 3 above; is there any way to keep > all of my Apple devices from seeing the g network from the WiFI Ranger? The > only way I can think of is to turn SSID broadcast off and then manually put > the SSID of the network into the Dell instead of letting it automatically > acquire. > > Essentially what I'm trying to do is improve internal throughput for Time > Machine backups and file opening/saving to the Mini file server; with the > side benefit of making sure that all external internet traffic is limited > by the external link connection speed and not by anything internal to my > LAN. The 10/100 in the WiFi Ranger is clearly enough to keep up with > anything on the internet end I might be connected to. > > Thanks for any suggestions you can offer. > > > _______________________________________________ > MacOSX-talk mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk > -- George N. White III <[email protected]> Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia
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