Time Capsule - First Impressions

Question

Hope this can help someone...
TC First Impressions:
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-> Relatively easy to set-up a wireless-n-only 5ghz network next to an existing wireless a/g network with TC as the router and Linksys a/g as a gateway plugged into the TC via ethernet.
-> Able to access Seagate 250 GB external drive plugged into the TC USB without problem.
-> Can see both the TC drive and Seagate drive from XP/Vista/Mac and add/remove files. This is also true from Vista running on the boot camp partition or as a virtual machine.
-> Time Machine set-up and backup was relatively simple.
-> TC wireless-n/a (5 ghz) is not visible by the Xbox 360. Linksys wireless-a network still worked with open NAT.
-> TC wireless-n/g (2.4 ghz) is accessible by the PS3, but without UPnP. Linksys wireless-g network still worked with UPnP.
-> Airport Utility restart of the TC has some issues. If wireless from the iMac, the wireless-n network signal would degrade and become unusable -- needed to unplug TC for restart and then everything was fine. If wired through the ethernet port via XP, the Airport Utility sometimes won't see the TC after a restart -- necessitating logging out and back into XP, then the TC was visible.
-> Internet performance on the wireless-n network is better than wireless a/g (about 30 feet away), but not significantly. Signal is 'very strong'.
-> Wireless-n access through Window Vista on the boot camp partition is much slower (really unusable) for unknown reasons. However, access through the boot camp partition as a virtual machine (VMWare) is much better -- but still a little slower that Mac OS X.
-> TC runs warm, but not hot. No smell or odor.
-> TC runs quiet to me.
My lessons learned:
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-> Plug the power cord into the TC before the outlet. The fit of the plug on the back of the TC is tight and needs a little extra force to set.
-> The initial wireless Time Machine backup does take a long time.
-> If the initial Time Machine backup is interrupted....when restarted TM performs an integrity check of the disk. This will look like the backup is hung at 21KB or something like that. Just need to let it run. The backup will be fine.
-> You can keep your existing router by making it a gateway and plugging it into the TC. No real impact on performance that I can see.
-> Plugging in a external drive formatted as FAT32 under Windows Vista and containing no files caused the TC to blink amber on startup. Once files were loaded, problem solved.
Message was edited by: Jeffrey Gardner1

Answer 1

Max(IT) -> From what I know, the xbox 360 only uses 802.11a (wireless-a) which is a 5ghz spectrum, so I didn't try the 2.4ghz.
R. Berardi -> You can definitely plug your existing router into the TC being as a gateway, or vice-versa. Either way you'd have wireless-n, you just have to decide which router you want to be the gateway (or connect to the modem). Both can be given a range of IPs to assign as DHCP that don't overlap, and you should be able to reach router admin page and TC Airport Utility from either network (access is by IP). If you wanted to run ethernet upstairs, this would work as well - but the routers have to be connected via ethernet. I've set-up the TC as the gateway with a Linksys a+g router, and this is my experience/understanding.
Thanks.