Performance when connected to 2nd Airport Extreme BS?

Drobo - End of Sale Drobo FS
1

Hi all,

I just got my Drobo FS the other day and so far everything seems pretty good. Speed is decent with my MacBook Pro over my 802.11N network with my Drobo connected to my Airport Extreme Base Station.

I do have another question, though. For the sake of reducing clutter in the room with all my other computer stuff, router, modem, DirecTV, cables, cables, cables!!! I am thinking of getting a secondary Airport Extreme base station to act as a wifi bridge in my house. Would I see any performance issues if I connected my Drobo FS to that 2nd Airport Extreme router versus the one directly connected to the modem?

Thanks!
William

2

Hard to say, but the more wireless links you add to the mix, the lower performance is going to go. Whether it drops lower than you can tolerate is very much a personal preference. I do my day-to-day stuff on wireless, but my HTPC is connected over wired gigabit ethernet. Sometimes you need the performance, sometimes you don’t.

Since you mention a house, keep in mind that you can always run ethernet if WiFi performance doesn’t end up being up to snuff. It takes some time and effort, but it’s not terribly complex or expensive. Aside from setting up that HTPC, wiring my house for gigabit was one of the best things I ever did.

3

thanks for the reply. I figured as much. Here’s the thing, it’s not my house, so don’t know how practical running a long ethernet cable from another room would be. That, and I HATE cables. Haha. the main reason on getting a drobo FS was to cut down on filling every single USB & FireWire port and desk space with external drives. If everything could be wireless, I’d be in heaven.

I may just give it a shot, since I’ve found a good price on used new-model AE BS on Amazon.

If anyone else has done this or something similar, please chime in!

Thanks,
William

4

I have used a pair of ethernet-over-powerlines adaptors. The ones I have are the DLink DHP-307AV (http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=DHP-307AV).

Very cheap, although they work just fine for streaming even HD movies. The only problem I have noticed so far is that they tend to overheat (mine are stuck in a cabinet, my fault for not doing it right), and thus need to be reset every once in a while.

In summary: powerline ethernet works for streaming media, but pick a good pair and install it correctly.