Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Airport express does not help with file sharing?

I got airport express and extreme, and the express does seem to help with web surfing in the far living room laptop station. But from the same station, it still seem to lag with my excel files-- saving them, entering info. So does express not help with speed/ ie, via file sharing? only help with web? thanks.

The remote Airport Express boosts the WiFi signal strength in the remote location which should improve network connectivity, and generally the network throughput in your remote location. (The weaker the signal, the slower the connection) The network and therefore the Airport Express is unaware of whether the data is from the internet or from another computer. However when the data is coming from another computer on the WiFi network, both computers are sharing the WiFi bandwidth therefore there may be some slowdown although unless the network speed is very low this slowdown would normally be unnoticeable without sensitive testing equipment.

The more likely cause of noticeably slower date transfer rates from another computer would be

1. the speed of the server the data is coming from. There are any number of reasons why the server response may be slow.
2. The speed of your remote computer, in this case your laptop.

At my location, I have an iMac, a MacMini, and a MacBook Air all connected to the WiFi network and all three usually in the same room along with several other devices sharing the same WiFi network bandwidth. Internet speeds feel roughly the same on all three Macs and on our iDevices. But when I am sharing data either way, the MacBook Air is noticeably, but not severely, slower than data sharing between the other two Macs. I have always attributed this to the MacBook Air's...

1. Slower processor speed
2. Slower hard drive
3. Smaller RAM memory which may require more swapping from the HD.

thanks Joe, good info.
So then indeed working on an excel file, file sharing, is part of the express/ wifi universe.

What is a good test? I saved the file to the laptops desktop.

I can't remember now specifically what I was doing during the sluggish behavior. What is a good test to test file sharing vs using it right off the desktop?

(air radar says connection is good)

1. Are you talking about the time required to load the file to begin work and the time to save the file when you are through? If so then having the file on your desktop which is on your local hard drive will always be faster. There is less communications overhead and your local bus speed will always be faster than network speed.
2. If you are talking about responsiveness while you are working with the file there are several possible scenarios...
   1. If the Excel data file is small enough, and if you have enough free RAM memory in your workstation, There should be no discernable = after the file is loaded. Everything will be held in the RAM memory of your workstation.
   2. If the available RAM on the workstation is limited and other tasks are making demands on the memory forcing data paging to and from the swapfiles, whether the original data file is on your HD or on the server it still should not have any significant effect on response time.
   3. If the origianal data file is too large for the available RAM of your workstation then a component of the Virtual Memory that is used by Excel will be mapped to the original location of the file and data may be pulled from the original file at almost any time. In that case it is unavoidable that your response time will be noticeably slower if the data file is on the server.
3. The standard answer to improving system response has always been to add more RAM memory if possible.Not only will more RAM reduce the likelihood of paging data to and from the swapfiles it also makes it less likely that data will have to be paged in from the original data file. If you are frequently encountering slow response times there are some other things you can try are...
   1. Temporarily shut down Time Machine on both the server and the workstation. Although most Time Machine operations take only a few seconds to a few minutes, they can really slow things down while they are going on. If you happen to hit and end of day/week/month cycle those can take a good bit of time. Not only do they slow the computers down if you are using a Time Capsule over the WiFi network it can eat a a lot of bandwidth. n do that may help
   2. Minimize the number of tasks running on both the server and workstation. (The other night my wife complained to me about slow network speeds and I found 22 open windows and 14 active tasks all running at the same time. Quiting the tasks she had forgotten she had open quickly restored her system performance.)
   3. If things are inexplicably slow rebooting the workstation has been known to help. Rebooting the server might help too.

You asked about testing response time and I realize I have not answered directly. But I wanted to point out some of the factors involved. The standard testing would be to create a large test file, in this case probably an Excel spreadsheet and measure...

• The time it takes to copy the file from one machine to the other and back again.
• The time it takes to open the file on the workstation workstation when the data file is on the server vs the time it takes to open the file when it is on the workstation hard drive.
• The time it takes to perform a complex computation on the data set in the file when it is resident on the server and when it is resident on the workstation hard drive
• While you are doing these tests have Activity Monitor open on your desktop and see if you can see any indication that your workstation is paging and or reading from the network. The System Memory, Disk Activity, and Network tabs at the bottom of the window should be helpful in this
• Remember for true accurace try not to have any applications or utilities running on either machine while you are doing the testing.

ok, Joe, great post! lot of info to absorb, I'll try to respond to some of it now:

Ram: I added Ram to my 27 desktop for an unrelated issue with Photoshop Bridge (someone recommend I do) a few months ago, and it did not help at all. I had to return the Ram, so I'm a bit dubious about Ram... but I'll keep that door open

in this case you are suggesting I add Ram to the laptop in the living room... it currently has the Ram that came with it, whatever that was....

Time Machine -- it's on the desktop, just backup up a few folders. I can't imaging it's an issue, but who knows.

Rebooting server, what does that even mean? just rebooting the computer?

Copy files from one machine to another, what does that mean? The laptop is filesharing with the desktop based on what files I allow the laptop to see.

What is a good complex computation to use?

Depending on the age of your MacBook it probably has 4GB of RAM which is normally enough, but if you are having slowdown problems more RAM might help. However there is no guarantee because as you have seen this is not necessarily a simple problem or it may be a simple problem with a complex cure.
It does not sound as if you are using Time Machine effectively but that is another issue. If it is not running then it is not contributing to the slowdown.
In this particular context the server is the desktop computer and your MacBook is the workstation. Rebooting the server means rebooting the your desktop computer.
That means choose, or create, a very large file, say 500 to 1,000 MB in size. Then over the network drag and drop that file from your server (desktop) to your workstation (laptop) and measure the number of seconds to complete the copy. If you want anything resembling a valid measurement repeat this process at least five times and take the average of the time required for the copy. Now repeat this going from the workstation (laptop) to the server (desktop). That will tell you how long it takes to move that much data from one machine to the other, a concomitant part of the time required to work on a file over the network.
There you have me, I am not an Excel aficionado. Offhand I would think some optimization or transform that involves a large data set spread across multiple sheets.

Ok Joe. thanks.
Listen, it's driving me bananas. I'm working on this excel file via file sharing on laptop in living room and the beachball is incessant.

You have so many variables. What would be the top three to five you would do to solve the problem.

Just baffled as I got the extreme/ and airport and they are working great and airadar says it's all at a high 70% connectivity. thanks!

If you only have the basic 4GB of RAM in your laptop my top five suggestions would be

1. Add more memory
2. Add more memory
3. Add more memory
4. Add more memory
5. Add more memory

Thanks Joe,I think this is what I have:
http://www.apple-history.com/mb_early_08

System profile says 1.5gb memory, is that Ram?

But Joe, I have the file saved to desktop and it has no issues off it's own hardrive. It only has issues when working via the wifi/ file sharing.

So more Ram would not help, correct?

That's number one. Then a year ago, on my desktop computer, I was miffed that thumbnails in Adobe Bridge had a 1 second delay and someone on forum said double the Ram. I bought the Ram, installed the Ram and it was not the issue. The issue turned out to be the limitation of the current hard drive technology (supposedly solid state will fix that when those are economical)

Again, the file has no issues on the laptop if it's on the laptop hardrive. But when I work off this file via filesharing i'ts beach-ball hell.