I mentioned how excited I was about the Time Capsule, and with tax refund in hand, I went ahead and ordered one. For having ordered it so late, it only arrived a few days after everyone else’s. Looks like Apple realized how popular these would be!

I’ll skip the usual unboxing and setup - that’s been covered elsewhere. Some might say excessively (seriously - it’s a small white box - what you see is what you get!).

So does it work well, and is it worth the hype? Yes, and Maybe.

The Importance of Backup

First off, what most people will be buying it for - the ability to have always-on network backups of their Leopard machines. For most people, this is the defining feature of the Time Capsule. I’m a little different - with my Mac Mini, I’ve been doing network Time Machine backups for months.

Time Machine is a completely different feature when used with NAS (Network Attached Storage). Just like always-on broadband changes the way you use the computer, having your storage always on and available 24/7 completely changes the nature of backup. Just like with broadband the internet is “Just There”, with a Time Capsule and Time Machine, your data is always “Just There”. It is that much of a fundamental shift.

Prior to setting up Time Machine, even with the convenience of frequently attached local storage and incremental backups al’a SuperDuper, I backed up rarely. Perhaps weekly, but more often not. Time Machine arrived just in time to save my bacon, and I cannot overstate the importance of this enough.

More than the sum of their parts

Time Machine by itself is an excellent backup system that makes the act of backing up invisible, and interesting enough that people actually do set it up. Another win for Apple’s understanding of its users and psychology. The Time Capsule is nothing more than a NAS. A good one that supports AFP and SMB quite well, but it is just putting storage out on the network after all. Not particularly magical; other products have done this for some time now.

Where they emerge as something near-magical is their perfect symbiosis. Time Machine’s incremental and hourly backup really shines here, as it happens like clockwork, and without any user intervention whatsoever. Your router is already on 24/7; now your backups occur the same way. No user intervention. No dedicated computer running all the time. No fuss, no muss.

Apple realizes this, and in their usual careful style, doesn’t dilute it. Any other manufacturer would be pushing how “versatile” the NAS is, and talk about sharing files, media libraries, and so forth. While the Time Capsule certainly can do all of this, Apple only pushes one feature - backup. By simplifying everything into that one message, they’ve hit the nail on the head much as always have.

Migrating to the Time Capsule

Okay, enough with my drivel. In practice the Time Capsule works quite well. After setting it up on the network, in theory all you have to do is mount the drive and point Time Machine at it. Of course, I didn’t do that quite yet.

It has been widely reported as an issue that you cannot migrate existing backups to the Time Capsule. This is not quite true, but Apple is responsible for the confusion.

When you backup with Time Machine, if stores the backups in two different formats, depending on whether you’re using local or network storage.

1. •If you use a local disk, it must be HFS+, and Time Machine just dumps its directories right on the disk. This is how most people have it set up today.
   

2. •If you use network storage, it does something much more intelligent - it puts everything inside a disk image (a sparse bundle technically) with the same filesystem layout inside that image. This is how my backups were set up.
   

Now, it’s true that you can’t migrate the “local format” to the “network format”, even though they’re identical except for the disk image wrapper. What’s aggravating however, is that Time Machine mostly supports using a disk image (the “network” format) locally! All you have to do is create a sparse bundle, name it appropriately, and Time Machine will use it. Aside from consistency, this also allows you to size the image however you want, and in effect have simple quotas on your backup.

(I said mostly supports - backups occur perfectly, but the Time Machine “space” interface doesn’t open the image properly, and thus doesn’t display your past backups. This can be worked around by just navigating there in the Finder and getting what files you need.)

Had Apple done this, migration would be trivial from system to system, no one would be worrying “do I have to dedicate the drive to Time Machine?”, and things would have been consistent and simple. I’m completely at a loss to why they used a different format on local volumes, and it seems like a significant missed opportunity.

Back to my migration, I copied my sparse images to the Time Capsule beforehand, then set Time Machine to use them. Voila - my complete backup history was intact, and incremental backups proceeded as if I hadn’t changed a thing.

Most people can’t do this. Dumb move, Apple.

Performance

I wish I didn’t have to write this, but something is seriously wrong with the Time Capsule’s network performance. I’ve spent the last couple of days copying all of my backups (Time Machine, disk images, Windows/Linux backups, etc) to the Time Capsule. I have gigabit ethernet run throughout the house, and the performance writing data to the Time Capsule has been appalling.

With both computers on wired ethernet, I can copy between my MacBook Pro and my Mac Mini at a sustained rate of about 40MB/s. Given that the MacBook Pro has a 2.5-inch drive, and the drives on the Mini are on a Firewire 400 bus with an IDE bridge board in-between, the hard drives are the limiting factor, not the network. With the Mac Mini as the host, Time Machine backups fly.

The Time Capsule, on the other hand, appears to be limited to about 10MB/s, or 80Mbps. That’s the standard performance of 100Mbps ethernet, and no, I’m not missing a zero. The Time Capsule with its “gigabit” connections is delivering performance an order of magnitude lower than it should be. Wireless performance is similarly crippled, running at an anemic 6MB/s. Faster than 802.11g, but barely. Even with interference and such, we should be pushing 20-30MB/s easily over 802.11n.

Time Capsule works, and incremental backups make this something of a moot point, but the performance has been a major letdown. I’d like to think that Apple might fix this someday, but given their track record on the previous Airport Extreme - whose AirDisk does not work with Time Machine - I’m not hopeful.

(As an aside, the AirDisk debacle is a lawsuit just waiting to happen, and I would support the users 100%.)

Other features

I’m upgrading from an older “UFO” Airport Extreme with 802.11g. As such, there are a lot of little features I haven’t had before that are quite useful:

1. •802.11n 5Ghz - the most obvious difference is that I’m now on (n) rather than (g). Right now the MacBook Pro is the only computer in the house capable of it, so I have the old Airport running as a (b/g) access point and print server. My Airport Express has been retired to be a travel access point.
   

2. •USB Disk Support - Should I ever fill up the 1TB capacity of the Time Capsule (and while I shudder to think of that much data, storage progresses ever on), I can hook up an external hard drive. Or a hub and multiple hard drives. Assuming the performance issues are resolved, it should be pretty future-proof.
   

3. •SNMP - Likely to only appeal to me since I run MRTG, but the older Airport base stations used the password as their community string. I’m quite happy to get my password out of the MRTG config file, and use the standard “public” community string.
   

4. •DHCP Reservations - A godsend to someone who uses laptops and servers, sometimes at the same time.
   

Of all features, DHCP reservations are the biggest win for me. I run several servers on my home network, and while most of the functionality has been consolidated onto the Mini, I do on occasion need remote access to my laptop. And to connect to a server, you need a static IP.

This has led me for a long time to maintain multiple network profiles - one for home, and one for everywhere else. If I forget to switch them, then I associate with other wireless networks but get no connectivity (because my IP’s aren’t valid on their network), and if I forget when I return I no longer have that predictable IP address.

DHCP reservations fix this. When you request an IP from the DHCP server (in this case, the Time Capsule), instead of doling out a random unused address, it uniquely identifies the computer by its hardware MAC address (a unique address assigned to all ethernet and wireless ethernet adapters) and gives out the same IP every time. The result is the best of both worlds - automatic IP management, and a static address when at home.

Well, almost. I have to do something unique to make life more interesting. One trick I pull is using OS X’s ability to prioritize connections to assign the same IP to both the ethernet and wireless interfaces on my laptop. That way I can generally just plug in my ethernet cable and get an instant boost of speed when I need it. Most network protocols don’t even notice.

Unfortunately, the standard way of assigning DHCP reservations (using the hardware MAC address) sees two separate adapters, and is too “smart” to allow me to assign the same IP to both. To work around this, there is something called the “DHCP Client ID” or “DHCP Class ID”. This is a short piece of text that is sent with the DHCP request to identify a computer in lieu of the MAC address. By using the same client ID for both interfaces, I can trick the Time Capsule into assigning the same IP address. Thus my MacBook Pro gets the same IP regardless of how I connect to my network, and still uses DHCP when out and about.

So it’s all good, right? Well, not quite. Windows networking continues to be particularly brain-dead. Not only is there no way to set the Client/Class ID anywhere in the GUI (DOS lives!), but you can only set it for the currently active adapter, and it’s not recognized by many DHCP servers, including the Time Capsule. I’ve found no way to work around this, and for now have settled on two IP’s for my Thinkpad - one for wireless, one for wired.

No QoS support

One thing that is a sore disappointment is that after all these years, Apple doesn’t include even the most basic Quality of Service (QoS) support in their routers. What this means in a nutshell is you can prioritize certain traffic or give it a fixed slice of bandwidth. While there are many, many uses for this, it’s critical if you want to use any sort of streaming media - and this includes VOIP phones or iChat video conferencing. If you’ve ever heard someone where is sounds as if every half-syllable is being cut off, they were probably on some IP-based connection.

I have both a VOIP line for my office and do frequent video chats. Considering the limited upstream bandwidth most American homes have and Apple’s emphasis on video chats (and built-in cameras), I’m very annoyed they haven’t added some basic QoS into the Airport line.

(I run my own bandwidth management on the Mini, and just as a test I disabled it this evening. Within seconds the Mini grabbed all the bandwidth it could and my VOIP line went straight to hell.)

In conclusion...

The combination of Time Machine and a Time Capsule is ever bit as important as the advent of protected memory years ago. Both of them prevent crashes and other problems from affecting your work and data. Just based on people I’ve talked to, I expect the uptake to be very rapid in geek circles, and lots of recommendations to then flow out to family and friends.

My experience with the Time Capsule is decidedly atypical. Most people upgrading to it will have more advanced routers already and won’t notice those features, but will buy it for the networked storage. I’m the opposite - I have networked storage (I just needed more) and wanted some of the networking extras that come with more modern technology.

The performance is decidedly subpar, and rather upsetting for a $300-$500 flagship product, but it’s not so bad as to affect day-to-day use. The continuing lack of QoS was not unexpected, but still rather annoying.

All in all, the Time capsule delivers exactly what it promises - effortless backup of all of your Macs, and it does so quietly and unobtrusively. And based on my own experience with recent data loss, that assurance is worth every penny.

ADDENDUM (2008/03/17)

I’ve run into one major flaw with the Time Capsule that I had originally chalked up to my own hackery, but now I’m not so sure.

I previously upgraded my original MacBook Pro wireless card from (g) to (n) using a card intended for a Mac Pro. This way there are no driver support concerns, and the connection was much more stable as soon as I replaced it.

However, not so with the Time Capsule. Whenever I have heavy bandwidth usage, the network drops (I have it configured as 5Ghz 802.11n only). This makes it just a tad unusable for network backup. For now I’ve reverted to using the old Airport for wireless access (it’s in bridging mode, so it’s not affecting the network in any other way).

I noticed today that my friend’s new MacBook Air was doing the exact same thing on his new Time Capsule - switching to wired Ethernet solved the problem immediately. Obviously no hackery or unsupported cards involved there, so I’m thinking something is just wrong with the Time Capsule’s wireless. Hopefully Apple is aware and working on a fix...

ADDENDUM (2008/03/19)

Apple has released Time Machine and Airport Updates 1.0, which just from the sound of it is hopeful. Time will tell if it fixes the wireless dropouts, which definitely are not just me.

ADDENDUM (2008/03/21)

Nope, problems continue after a couple of days, even at one point causing a complete Time Capsule reboot. Definitely some firmware problems involved.