Real World Performance compared to Charts

[acfpt]

Hello Everyone-

I have been reading and trying to absorb the incredible information to be found on this awesome site, but there is one thing that I have been unable to work out for myself.

I want to create a wireless file storage/backup system for a mac-centric home network. I have limited hardware already (phone company-provided wireless router/DSL modem) and a bunch of external hard drives. I am willing to invest in a dedicated NAS and then use one of the USB HDD as a backup to that NAS (no RAID necessary in the NAS)

With that background, here is my question- with the great variation in speed seen on the charts for read/write times, I know that my wireless connection will be my bottleneck. Is it even reasonable to use a wireless configuration for these functions (wired is not an option due to all laptops in the house that move around too much). If it is reasonable, what kind of real-world performance can I expect compared to the numbers seen on the charts?

Thanks in advance for all of your help.

Adam

 

[thiggins]

An 802.11g wireless connection with a moderate signal level will typically provide ~ 10 Mbits/s of throughput, which is ~ 2 MBytes/s.

11n will provide perhaps ~ 50 Mbps or ~ 7 MB/s. Both are far below the
capabilities of any current design NAS.

It's possible to use NASes with a wireless connection. Whether it's reasonable depends on the sizes of the files you're moving and whether you expect to do video streaming.

 

[acfpt]

Tim-

Thanks for the response. I now have a reasonable number to keep in mind. I may someday move things around to where I can be more hard-wired, so I would want a NAS that would be able to take advantage of that. Until that day, I just need something for Time Machine backups and storage of older digital photos that I don't need daily or even monthly access to. I know the initial Time Machine backups will take forever but then the incremental backups should take much less time. Any large files with frequent access (for Photoshop or iMovie) I would keep local or use a Firewire external HDD. The closest I would come to media streaming would be my iTunes library which is all music, no video.

Do you think I would be able to meet these requirements with a PogoPlug or the new Iomega iConnect?

Thanks again,

Adam