Ethernet to Time Capsule (for storage) not backup

You can setup ethernet to TC which is standalone. However it is bit tricky getting your normal network working if you use wifi. It needs manual configuration. Happy to give details.. but IMHO it is better long term with iMac to buy USB drive and sell off the TC.. USB is faster but more importantly, much more reliable.

If you can plug the TC into the main network and use iMac on ethernet to the TC that will work great. Turn off wifi and all good.

Speed over ethernet for TM backup is around 50-60GB/hr. Depending on the age of the computer, USB3 is slightly faster, due to speed issues in Time Machine. USB is much faster using a backup software like Carbon Copy Cloner.

Happy to help.

I wasn't quite specific enough to your main question.. speed over network for Time Capsule for non-backup.

Tesserax (guru around here) did speed tests a while back.

https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3395

The Time Capsule is not fast.. This is talking about the internal drive.

I can achieve about 40MB/s (B for Bytes and b for bits.. try to be consistent).

That agrees well with Tesserax.. he gets better read speeds.. up to 50MB/s which I have seldom seen. That will depend on setup and differences in network.

A typical NAS like Synology should come close to saturating gigabit on both read and write.. so >100MB/s. It will again depend on disks used.. protocols etc.. but again my values are close to Tesserax.

Speed to USB 3 should be better than gigabit but USB has lots of overheads so never as good as it should be. I would expect better read.. but gigabit write is pretty much correct.

Thunderbolt is hugely expensive.. even cables are ridiculous price.. but it does perform. For SSD well worth it.. for spinning drives.. USB3 plenty good enough.