802.11n-equipped Macs with the latest AirPort client software (available only for Leopard) automatically switch between networks, depending on which is optimal for the conditions of the wireless client. This preserves the speed of the 5GHz band while allowing older devices access to your network.īy default, Time Capsule broadcasts both networks with the same SSIDs (the technical term for a network name), though you can set a different name for the 5GHz network. Simultaneous dual-band solves this problem by splitting traffic into two separate networks with one base station: older clients stay on the slower 2.4GHz band 802.11n-enabled Macs and other hardware use the 5GHz band. (Apple chose to allow only 5GHz networks to use wide channels, in which twice as much spectrum is used to carry data 802.11n puts so many restrictions on the optional use of wide channels in 2.4GHz that it’s not typically worthwhile.) (A discontinued iMac model and the Mac minis sold before newest March 2009 revision were the two exceptions.) Before this revision to Time Capsule, if you had a mix of older 2.4GHz-only devices and newer 5GHz-capable gadgets, you had to choose: you could either put all devices on a 2.4GHz network where older, slower Wi-Fi and other technology issues would keep your newer devices from working at their highest speeds or you could set up two base stations, one for 2.4GHz and one for 5GHz. The 802.11n standard can optionally use either 2.4GHz or 5GHz, and Apple chose to build support for both bands into theĪpple TV ( ) and most Macs released after October 2006. IPod touch) ) can only use the 2.4GHz band they don’t have radios that can use the 5GHz band. Older devices using 802.11b (the original AirPort hardware released before 2003) and 802.11g (AirPort Extreme gear that shipped from 2003 to 2006, along with the This creates two 802.11n (Draft N) Wi-Fi networks for the price of one: one using the 2.4GHz band and one in the 5GHz band. The new Time Capsule sports what Apple calls simultaneous dual-band. These updated models do introduce a few new features: simultaneous dual-band, a guest network, and the ability to access your Time Capsule’s disks via AFP over the Internet (specifically, file sharing over the Internet, not using Time Machine to back up or recover files over the Internet). This is fine for occasional file sharing, but if you’re doing a lot of file sharing, you might want to check into a dedicated NAS or Mac file server.Īll of that functionality is old hat. Transferring the same file to either Time Capsule took about 33 percent longer than it did to transfer to the Mac. I transferred a 1GB video file to both Time Capsules, as well as to a Mac via AFP. Last reviewed the Time Capsule ( ), file transfer speeds weren’t exactly zippy. Also, Apple says that a rare problem with Time Machine backup image corruption on Time Capsule was corrected with base station 7.4.1 firmware and Mac OS X 10.5.6.) Speaking of file sharing, when we Apple says that before OS X 10.5.5, Time Machine sometimes reported the Time Capsule drive as full when it was not. (Theoretically, you should not run out of space, because Time Machine culls older backups but users have reported that they have run out of room on the disk. The backup functionality hasn’t changed with this new version of Time Capsule, so the same basic problems still exist: you can’t swap out the internal drive, and even with the 1TB model, you may run out of disk space if you’re backing up multiple Macs as well as using the internal drive for file sharing. You can also use one or more external USB drives attached to the Time Capsule’s USB port as a Time Machine target. This can impact wireless backup performance, depending on how large those files are. So, if you use a program that frequently makes changes to a large central file (like Entourage, which stores email in one large database file), Time Machine will back up that entire file, even if only one item in the file has changed. One thing to remember is that Time Machine backs up at the file level. Such backups take less time and are generally handily accomplished over a wireless connection. These hourly backups are incremental-that is, they back up only files that have changed, or have been added since the last backup. After that initial backup, Time Machine will back up to the Time Capsule every hour (unless the Mac has been powered down or the previous backup took longer than an hour).
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