Apple TimeCapsule QOS issue solution

Because Apple's TimeCapsule is a dud when it comes to networking and has no QOS, I needed to figure out an alternative solution for my VOIP phone. I decided to get a switch (used for $5 on craigslist) and give the VOIP phone it's own dedicated IP connection.

Recently Shaw Cable has changed their policies and while they still offer all customers a second IP address at no charge, they no longer offer it by default.

You need to make a call and get them to add it to your account. It takes less than a minute for them to do it but you'll probably be on hold for about 10 :/

Unplug the cable modem for a minute, hook it back up and you're back in business.


I guess they're assuming that everyone will be using a router behind their cable modem and will have no need for it since they changed out the modems to ones that don't offer two ports. They're probably not expecting anyone to still be using a switch.

So the network looks like

Internet Cable Modem -> Switch -> VOIP modem
-> Apple TimeCapsule


The Apple TimeCapsule is set up to create a new wifi network.

Apple Time Capsule slow internet issues

My Apple Time Capsule (firmware v 7.6.1) worked flawlessly at the beginning, then started giving me problems with the internet speeds after a week.

Not just with the wifi but even when connected directly via ethernet.

People on forums suggested all sorts of things including downgrading the firmware.

Turns out the culprit is my backup software. The cpu on the Time Capsule isn't powerful enough.

Throttling down the network usage by the backup software helped solve the issue.

I use CrashPlan. Under Advance > Network, you can change the upload/download speed limits for WAN and LAN.

Update
Turns out that still didn't solve the issue. It's a known issue -- Apple Time Capsule SUCKS as a router.

The Time Capsule lacks QoS, so this might be an issue under certain circumstances. Here is my story:

1. I used to be on a 8.5/0.8 Mbps ADSL2+ Internet connection. The actual speeds I was getting were 7300 kbps for download and 680 kbps for upload. I was using the G711 high quality voice codec for VoIP. Even if I was saturating the download channel, the voice quality - me hearing the remote party - was superb. Not sure why this happened, but I would guess the packets were prioritised somehow form the source (my VoIP provider). The upload was a different story. As soon as I was uploading something (e.g. sending large photos by e-mail), the voice quality - the remote party hearing me - had to suffer significantly. Conclusion: do not upload anything major while talking on the phone, and/or switch to the more effective G729a codec.

2. More recently I switched to VDSL2 and I am getting 25 Mbps for download and 7 Mbps for upload. It appears that it is virtually impossible to saturate the upload now. Not only the voice quality is unperturbed, but the upload of large files takes only a few seconds, so the potential to affect the voice quality is very short. Conclusion: I can live with this situation.

It would be nice if Apple would get their act together and add QoS to the AE and TC. With the proliferation of VoIP, it would become a mandatory feature to have.

CrashPlan + Apple Time Capsule

CrashPlan does not officially support backup to/from network shares.

Getting CrashPlan to work with Apple Time Capsule is a pain in the ass.

I tried following instructions on here:
http://www.marriedgeeks.com/2010/01/crashplandroboworkarounddata-redundancy.html

but that just resulted in CrashPlan complaining that the destination is unavailable.


Using the "unofficial" workaround:
http://support.crashplan.com/doku.php/recipe/back_up_windows_mapped_drives

Gives me two mapped drives:

1. A share mapped by SYSTEM (S:) that I cannot access through my regular user account, and

2. a share mapped by my user that I can (Z:)

At this time there isn't really a proper way to handle this...
http://superuser.com/questions/432626/unknown-username-or-bad-password-on-network-drive-mounted-by-system-user-on-a-sc

It is a minor annoyance, but I've been running my backups this way since the beginning of June 2012, and I've had no issues. Everything backs up just fine.

I should note, that I do not use crashplan's online backup service. I use the free version to backup my data to friend's computers.

Adding network folders to Windows 7 libraries

Windows 7 Libraries don't support network locations.

The solution provided from Microsoft is to right click on the folder and select "Make Available Offline".

This does not work on my Apple Time Capsule. That menu item is not available in the context menu.

Instead, I used this Win7 Library Tool from Zorn Software.

Windows 7 does not recognize Hfs formatted drive

The Apple Time Capsule comes with an Hfs formatted drive.

Copy handlers on top of Windows, unfortunately, see the share as Fat32.

TeraCopy 2.27 refuses to copy files larger than 4gb to it.

The trick is to use the built-in windows Move/Copy to copy those large files over.

Live and learn.

Windows 7 transferring files to NAS utterly slow

Transferring files to my Apple Time Capsule was slow. I was getting speeds ~20MB/s.

Turns out the culprit was TeraCopy 2.27.

The Windows 7 built in move/copy is twice as fast at transferring files across the network!

Others have seen the same; unfortunately, there is no resolution.

XBMC & libRTMP: fix for broken streaming videos

If your streaming video has recently borked, it's quite possibly the fault of an outdated libRTMP file.

Update the file and you're golden.

XBMC Wiki

libRTMP forum thread

Zoomplayer: Green screen

when playing certain video files, if you get a green screen and the issue is not with the codecs, it could be due to the renderer you're using.

I'm getting the best results with VMR9 Windowless