Setting up an Apple Time Capsule for MacBook backup

Speed is the only thing I can think of. Just like it's better to hook your Apple TV up to Ethernet even though it works on wifi.

Wired > Wireless.

25 words or less version: Even with a wireless AC router with a wireless AC Time Capsule and a wireless AC laptop, all the devices on the network are competing for the same 1350Mbps of bandwidth to/from the router. Each gigabit port on a router, however, is an uninterrupted 1000 or 1024Mbps lane directly to what's plugged into it. The most important thing you can take away is this: If how you currently have it set up works and you like it, there is no reason to change it.

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Is this an ideal setup?

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Ideal is a broad term and subjective. If it works well, and you're happy with it, then you should leave it as it is. If you think it could stand to improve, read further.

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I have read that the time capsule should be hard wired to a router, but not sure why.

Can someone enlighten me?

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So we'll start pretty basic here, and some of this is probably beneath your understanding, but the beginning is usually a good place to start, I find.

A router's job is to receive data from outside your network (the internet) and inside your network (your laptop(s), desktop(s), home server(s), tablets, AppleTV, Roku, Chromecast...I think that's enough examples, but the list continues) and then open the appropriate channel for the two devices to communicate (whether they're across the room or across the world. This is being overly simple for the internet/outside-network aspect, but fortunately, that's out of the scope of the question, so I'll leave it at that).
So now let's think of some things on your network that you would like access to from another devices also within your network. An inconclusive list includes all the songs/photos/videos/documents on one device that you would like to view from another. Assuming the sharing properties are appropriately configured, your router allows one device to send these materials over a channel to the other device. Based on the size and type of file being transferred, you need some amount of your router's maximum available bandwidth. I don't have numbers for hard examples here, but to be sure we're on the same page, it takes much less bandwidth to send a still photo from your itunes library to your iPad than it does to stream an HD movie from your itunes library to your iPad. By a factor of about "a lot."

So that is our basics. Your router pretty much creates a channel between two things allowing them to communicate. These things can saturate the "channels" your router has. So that's where we get to next, which is getting to the heart of your question in case you want to skip the basics (ie TL;DR). Now, you didn't give which router you own, which macbook you own, or which Time Capsule you bought. This is fine, but it's going to make the specific numbers I use arbitrary. I'll happily change them if you provide the models of each (or more specifically the networking capabilities of each, if you know them). I'll start with my router, as it's fairly popular and decently new. The Linksys by Cisco ea4500. It has Wireless N, and it claims to be "N900." "N900" means that it has two separate data layers, each of which are 450Mbps (megabits per second). These two layers don't really talk to each other and do not compete for traffic (in a basic setup, they can share a name and the manufacturer puts a little piece of software in to let you use the less cluttered one, but I do not know of any client devices capable of being simultaneous dual-band clients. The meaning here is that, though it claims 900Mbps, your laptop has, at most, 450Mbps. Everything else on your network is also competing for some of this space. There are a total of 900Mbps to compete for, but any one device is limited to 450-the amount other devices are taking. The more devices you have, the less "room" for things to get transferred. Now, what is particularly devastating in your case is that your laptop needs some of this "room" to deliver the content that needs to be backed up, and then the router uses some more of the "room" to send that same data to the Time Capsule. Fortunately, though, most home routers have some number of available RJ45/cat5/ethernet ports. Again, going back to my ea4500, it has 4Gbps (Gigabit per second) ports. Now, for wireless devices, there were 900Mbps total, split into two 450Mbps "bands" (2.4GHz and 5GHz) with all wireless devices competing for bandwidth. From a hardwired-port, there is 1Gbps available, and if the Time Capsule is plugged directly into the router, it gets the full 1Gbps "lane" to itself (slightly more than double the entire wireless band, assuming the device had it to itself with no competition). So now the laptop has to compete with other devices for the 450Mbps "lane," but it sends the data down a different path that doesn't take anymore "room" from the router on to the Time Capsule. For this reason, when you say "an ideal setup," if we are to assume that a single, on-site backup is ideal (most IT people will say "no" to this being ideal, because in the case of any big natural disaster, you stand to lose both the backup and the hard copy, but most that harp on this fail to see it as a middle ground between "backup" and "no backup."), I would call it "ideal" to set the backup to occur at a time when I am usually not awake but at home, like 0300. When I go to bed, I would plug the laptop into the wall and the router. Then you would have 1Gbps to the router from the laptop and another 1Gbps connection from the router to the Time Capsule.


Anyone in the know feel free to correct anything I explained incorrectly. If anyone is confused by how I have written something, quote it and ask for further clarification, and I'll do my best to try to re-word it or explain it in a different way.

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WTF

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Oops. Sorry there. That slipped out. Wut I ment 2 say was that if u plug it up, it will b faster, but if u are happy with how fast it is now u don't need to change anything.

Problem is that my time capsule has a different ssid then my main wireless network.

I want the mac book to be able to back up to the time capsule as often as it wants to, but also use my existing wireless network for everyday use.