Camera Labs

In my home office I have a Linksys router hooked up to a Linksys NAS device, which is in turn hooked up to a 160GB HDD that I use for all my photos, music and other media, so it can be accessed anywhere in the house via my computer or my wife's. She runs wireless, I run wired currently (we both have laptops). I'm trying to decide if for image transfer it makes that much of a difference to be wired or wireless; I'm only 10' from the router, and it's a 802.11b/g router, so 54Mbps, which should be plenty fast for media transfers, as long as I'm not streaming media.

What do you all think; wired or wireless? What sort of external storage, if any, do you use?

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John
Canon SX100 IS (hoping to upgrade soon)
My photos

Hi John,

I run both wireless (a & b) and Gigabit wired here. The advantage of Gigabit is that it will keep up with most hard drives which is definitely not true of wireless. It's quite easy to wire your own Gigabit network cables around the house but if you use wall-plate sockets you must keep to an absolute minimum the amount of wire exposed inside the socket between the intact Cat 6 cable and the IDC connectors or you'll radiate the signal away and end up with only 100 Mbps.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

Not quite brave enough to start cutting into the walls yet. I have my cables currently tucked down between the carpet and the baseboards, which hides them nicely. I have to run wired anyway for my Xbox 360 (yes, I'm one of those "old guy" gamers).

I'd considered upgrading my router to gigabit from 10/100, but since N is still in "draft" I was thinking about waiting (and getting a gigabit N router at the same time).

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John
Canon SX100 IS (hoping to upgrade soon)
My photos

Just remember to go Ethernet when doing any sort of banking etc, as packets(wirless info) can be crabbed from the air and used against you.


I use Netgear N series wireless routers - 270mbps - works a dream

I only use wireless when I have to - for example a laptop in the garden!

Otherwise it's wired for everything in the house for speed and security - and it's all Gigabit!

You guys are making me want to get a new router! I feel a bit like a dinosaur being on 802.11b/g and 10/100! Of course, considering my downstream bandwidth maxes out at about 12Mbps, I guess I can't complain too much.

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John
Canon SX100 IS (hoping to upgrade soon)
My photos

While it is possible to sniff packets from the air, it is also possible on a wire. The thing of importance is that the session with your bank or wherever is using SSL and encrypted. Also your home router should be secured using some sort of wireless security protocol such as PKI/WEP/WSP. and to be even more secure in conjunction with mac filtering. (disable SSID if you can as well). The fact of the matter is the average hacker does not care about your banking information but rather the bank itself. (meaning they are going to try to break into the bank before parking in frot of your house with airsnort to try to steal your info.)

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Canon 450D EF 17-40mm f/4L USM, 50mm f/1.8

I use N it's pretty good but of corse gigabit is going to be faster. But how fast do you want it too be. I am happy with the speed of wireless N and I would waste the time of running cables up stairs. Personally I would go with wireless unless you want some really fast speeds.

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Camera: Canon 40D, 17-85mm IS
Knowledge of Photography: Hours of reading and videos.
Computer: iMac 24inch 3.06Ghz 4gb ram 500gb HD Nvidia 8800 GS 512mb

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Wired is also the way to go if you want to avoid potential latency issues when streaming video, especially High-Def.

Bob.

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OM-D E-M5 + ED 12-50mm, H-PS14042E, H-F007014E, L-RS014150E, M.ZUIKO DIGITAL 45mm 1:1.8.
Gitzo GT1541T, Arca-Swiss Z1 DP ball-head.
Astrophotography: TEC 140 'scope, FLI ML16803 camera, ASA DDM60 Pro mount.

I had wireless over two storeys but was annoyed how slow it was esp. when the phone was used.
So I drilled some holes and now it's all Gigabit-E'Net...
Safe, secure, fast, reliable...

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Thomas (beware: Nikon-fanboy and moderator!) My Lens Reviews, My Pictures, My Photography Blog
D800+assorted lenses

wired. I use wireless for browsing the internet, connected to my wireless internet router, but its so much more responsive when im using an ethernet cable. Same with on line gaming, i get horrid ping spiking on wireless and css.

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I've upped my Iso, now up yours.
Nikon D700, Nikon D80, Micro Nikkor 105 f2.8 AI-S,Nikon 85mm 1.8D, Nikon 50mm 1.8D, Nikon 35mm F2D, Nikon 16-35 f4 VR, Nikon 24-70mm F2.8 AF-S, Nikon 70-200VRII, Nikon 70-300mm VR, 300mm f2.8 AI IF ED, SB-800, SB-900. Noiseware pro,NIK Dfine, Nik Colour Effex, Nik Sharpener Pro

You guys get really bad troubles with wireless mines runs perfectly fine for streaming vids and gaming, i'm always watchings things from other computers on my laptop. If it really high quality well of corse it's going to lag because wireless isn't as fast as gigabit internet. But if you have it set up right, it should be fine.

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Camera: Canon 40D, 17-85mm IS
Knowledge of Photography: Hours of reading and videos.
Computer: iMac 24inch 3.06Ghz 4gb ram 500gb HD Nvidia 8800 GS 512mb