What speed is Apple TV's wireless connection?

AppleTV can do the n protocol, but it's your PowerPC that limits the communication to the g speed. That's true even if you stream from a disk that is connected to the n station.

If you want to set up an ethernet connection for faster syncing - why don't you just connect your computer with the ATV??

I was just going to suggest direct computer to AppleTV - presumably this would need a crossover network cable - anyone tried?

AC

Is a crossover cable necessary? I don't know about Macs or Apple TVs specifically but many, if not most, Ethernet devices made these days can automatically detect the type of cable and configure themselves accordingly.

iMac Mac OS X (10.4.9) The more I think, the more I think I shouldn't think more.

The AppleTV implements the fastest 802.11n connections over wireless. But when copying data to its hard drive, I think the CPU is the limiting factor.

I've not seen it accept data at more than 5 Megabytes per second.
Ethernet may be slightly faster especially if you are using 802.11n at 2.4GHz.

I'm also wondering if a cross over cable is necessary, if the G5 is hardwired to the extreme, you can then connect anything to it either by wire or wifi through the extreme.

1. If you plug an ethernet cable into your tv it will or should automatically use ethernet, no need for you to do anything.

2. The tv uses all these network types.

To answer your questions about speed: 'n' is theoretically the fastest because both the extreme and the tv are 100 mbps ethernet and not 1000 mbps, however in practice a wired network will likely be the better every time.

You don't seem to be able to connect anything by ethernet is that correct, what is your set up, do you use the extreme as your router or do you have a modem/router somewhere else.

My answers to your questions (based on opinion, but not fact)

1. Ethernet is indeed faster than any wireless connection. How do you do it? I cannot fathom why simply plugging into the ethernet port on the PowerMac G5 doesn't work, unless its broken. The only other thing that comes to mind is some kind of IP conflict. What you might try doing is temporarily disabling the wireless adaptor and see if that solves the problem. There shouldn't be one, though, what you're trying to do is rather straightforward.

2. The Apple TV uses 802.11n when communicating with an 802.11n router as you have. If for some reason you've set the router for "g" connections only, you might be defaulting to "g"connection speed. One other thing to be mindful of, is if your wireless network includes other "b" or "g" devices, it tends to slow down performance of "n" connections. My wireless printer is the only "g" device I have, and I notice that it is enough to slow down the whole network, so I'm moving back to connecting the printer via ethernet (when I'm not so lazy).

As for your final "unnumbered" question about what's best....

I would suggest that ethernet connections are always faster than ANY wireless connection. That being said, the Apple TV's performance is acceptable on wireless "n" or "g" connections, in my humble opinion. Unless you've already got CAT-5 cable running to the Apple TV, its not worth the effort to do so unless you have a very weak wireless signal where the Apple TV is located. As for which way to connect, simply plugging in an active ethernet connection should disable wireless connectivity, but you can be doubly sure by simply taking out the wireless connection settings.

Good luck!

Kenny

1. Right now the ethernet connection is faster than the 'N' wireless. The 'N' wireless though has a theoretical max of around 300 mbps while the built in ethernet is 100 mbps. So a future upgrade to the draft 'N' firmware could make it faster than ethernet. Right now, according to my tests though, 100 mbps ethernet is definitely faster.

By the way, you don't need a crossover cable, the ethernet ports are the smart ports and will configure themselves correctly.

Glor

By the way, you don't need a crossover cable, the
ethernet ports are the smart ports and will configure
themselves correctly.

Glor

That's good to know - I might need to try this one day, and can't remember where I've put my crossover cable, in fact I may even have cannibalised it for something else!

AC