Wireless NAS?

[V8toytruck]

I run a Airport Express wireless router. Its been super reliable, easy to setup, and the range is perfect for my apt. I have a PC, MBPro, PS3, iPhone that is regularly connected to it.

I will be picking up a Synology NAS soon so I can share files cross platform/backup/have remote access. Maybe someone can shed some light on a few questions.

Wondering what would be the best solution for my situation

- Buy wireless N USB adapter for NAS (Airport Express has no ethernet ports) and be limited to N transfer speeds

- Buy a switch, hook it up to Airport Express and NAS, and use Ethernet cable for large transfers. Im assuming the PC/Mac/PS3 will see the NAS even though its wired, and the rest of the systems are wifi?

- Not buy anything and directly connect NAS to PC. Would the MBPro even see the NAS on the network? I'd imagine I'd also need to leave the PC on all the time to have remote access too.

Another option Im thinking about is switching to a Airport Extreme and just using an external HDD (Airdisk). Problem is no redundancy and reported very slow transfer speeds?

[BlackJack]

If you plan to stream media like video (especially if it is HD) or do large file transfers then I would go with a switch (gigabit preferred) and some cat 5e/cat 6.

I was using 802.11n (just single band) to connect to a Buffalo NAS but the steam quality was choppy. Now I'm streaming and doing movie file transfers over hard wire and it's fast and reliable. Fishing cable wasn't fun but I'm glad I did it.

[gunn]

If you plan to stream media like video (especially if it is HD) or do large file transfers then I would go with a switch (gigabit preferred) and some cat 5e/cat 6.

I was using 802.11n (just single band) to connect to a Buffalo NAS but the steam quality was choppy. Now I'm streaming and doing movie file transfers over hard wire and it's fast and reliable. Fishing cable wasn't fun but I'm glad I did it.

In general, a hardwired connection is an order of magnitude (1Gbps vs 150Mbps) bigger a pipe than a WIFI connection.

My current setup is a server (like your NAS) connected to an 802.11n router/switch with a 100Mbps link.
My receiving system is a HTPC sits on the other side of an 802.11n link.
At any one point in time, there might be up to two other users using the wifi network (laptops).

- I can stream HD video over my 802.11n link from my server to the HTPC. In this example, theoretically the 100Mbps ethernet link is the bottleneck. In reality though, if any other device is pumping serious data across the wifi link (like my wife copying photos and uploading them to the net/server), the HD video will become choppy. Since the WIFI mesh is shared, I'm sure I could do better with a higher end 802.11n router that support MIMO (I think my router cost $30).
- The big advantage of a hardwired connection (going to a switch vs a hub but I don't believe they even make hubs anymore) is that each connection linked to the switch gets the full 1Gbps theoretical max -- up to the network throughput capacity of the switch's network processor. Even a cheapie switch should be able to handle the throughput from at least two 1Gbps link.

In your suggestions:

* connecting a NAS device (or just a JBOD aka just a box of discs) to your PC would require your PC to be a) on all the time and b) act as a network processor to shuffle packets to/from the drives to/from the network interface.
Unless you already have a PC that's running in a closet (I do -- it's also the print server), I'd just buy a NAS and hang it off of a decent router/switch.
* Connecting your NAS device to the rest of your network via 802.11n means that your network throughput will be effectively halved. Any packet that you want from your NAS will first need to be transmitted over the 802.11n to the Airport and THEN retransmitted across teh same wireless net to the end point.
* The cheapie solution is just a switch.
* The better solution would be to buy a better 802.11n router that also is a switch and hook your NAS device to it via a hardwired link. To save money, you could then sell the Airport express as people always love buying Apple stuff.

-g

[V8toytruck]

Streaming media is probably lowest priority for me. Priorities for the NAS

1) File sharing from Mac/PC from work to home and back to work again.
2) Back up of data
3) FTP access to data

What would I gain from buying a router w/ switch (most likely a Airport Extreme Base station so I can extend range with Airport Express), vs getting a $20 switch and keeping the Airport express? If I can get away with spending $20 I probably do that.

The NAS and WD 2TB drives will set me back enough.

[Zorrm]

NAS needs to be wired. period... I have one, and it was not very responsive over the N Band wifi

[TWoods450]

I agree with the wired responses, I have a dual band wireless N router (linksys e3000), but I only really use the wifi for surfing the web or transferring small files from one laptop to another. For streaming media all my equipment is hardwired with Cat5e. Its en -expensive and pretty simple to run, guarantee you won't regret the results.

[V8toytruck]

Thanks for the replies, I have decided to go with the wired setup. 50GB per shoot just takes way too long over wifi.