Time Capsule questions

mastman

I am in the need for a new router, and I also need a backup solution because I'm tired of randomly burning DVDs of all my datas. I have a question about Time Capsule's capability as a router mainly.

Useful info: I have a new macbook pro and need this to work for my xbox360ing and my starcraft/2ing and diablo3ing.

does the interface have a lot of options? port forwarding? able to apply static IPs by MAC address or machine name? Is it fast? Does it suck and drop connections and yuo have to hard reset it? Can you frag bitches on the internets for hours at a time without problems? Does your Blizzard games work perfectly-- I ask this because Blizzard games appear to me to have a behavior on their own.

Teth

I don't know, I just wanted to point out that it's pretty cool that Apple has a CDP solution for home users that isn't hard at all to set up. Shit that's awesome, wonder it can be used for PC's and Linux.....

bash

Port forwarding - Yes but not quite as robust as something like DD-WRT. It works well enough for everything I've ever used it for. It also works fine with things like iChat.

Static IPs by MAC/name - I don't know as I have never tried to do this.

Fast - I've never had any problems with speed.

Dropped connections - I've only ever had to restart my Time Capsule when updating the firmware. All external network issues I've had since getting it have been with my DSL modem and/or service, never the TC.

Fragging bitches - I haven't had any trouble fragging bitches with mine. I've got an 802.11n (5.2GHz) network set up that my iMac connects to. I've not had any trouble with Battle.net, iChat, Skype, or Quake Wars, or connecting to any games with my Wii (connected via ethernet to the TC).

Windows/Linux compatibility - The TC supports SMB/CIFS sharing on the hard drive alongside AFP. As long as you're not going apeshit sharing files to the TC you won't have any trouble with it. I would not however use it as a replacement for a full sized file server. If you have a .Mac^H^H^HMobileMe account the TC now supports the Back to my Mac feature which allows you to access the TC over the internet without doing any firewall kung-fu.

mastman

Thanks. I'm just so hesitant with apple network stuff. My airport express(music streaming) works about 70% of the time, and I go to their discussion forums and I see that interrupted media streaming is not uncommon. It's just such an elegant solution to both of my problems.

iTunesIsEvil

The newest firmware update for the Airport Extreme and the Time Capsules added DHCP Reservations that are set-up with the MAC of the machine that you want to give a static address to. (FINALLY. I hate that this is a feature left out of most home-routers.)

I am actually very happy with the port-forwarding on the AEx. You can actually specify the external port, and a DIFFERENT internal port if you need that functionality.

I have had no problems with the router itself dropping my devices. My Macbook does go retarded on me sometimes though and decides it can't connect to the router even though everything else in the house still can.

I couldn't tell you about how well it works for PC-gaming, but it does just fine with my 360. I don't have anything special set up for the IP it gets, and everything still works perfectly on Live.