Wireless printer connections
 

My home network is a combination of wired/wireless based on a LinkSys
router. I want to move 2 printers to a location where it is not feasible
to string ethernet cables. I have heard of wireless printer solutions
but they seem to be touchy and hard to get working right. Does anyone
know of a reliable and fairly easy way to do this? I have a Brother
laser printer and an Epson inkjet, both have USB and ethernet
connections.


--
Peter

Re: Wireless printer connections
 

On Jan 22, 8:33*pm, Peter A <pait...@CRAP.nc.rr.com> wrote:
> My home network is a combination of wired/wireless based on a LinkSys
> router. I want to move 2 printers to a location where it is not feasible
> to string ethernet cables. I have heard of wireless printer solutions
> but they seem to be touchy and hard to get working right. Does anyone
> know of a reliable and fairly easy way to do this? I have a Brother
> laser printer and an Epson inkjet, both have USB and ethernet
> connections.
>
> --
> Peter

If the printers did not original come with some type of wireless or
the manufacturers does not offer/recommend a wireless network module,
most other wireless add on can cause problem.

Re: Wireless printer connections
 

Peter A wrote:
> My home network is a combination of wired/wireless based on a LinkSys
> router. I want to move 2 printers to a location where it is not feasible
> to string ethernet cables. I have heard of wireless printer solutions
> but they seem to be touchy and hard to get working right. Does anyone
> know of a reliable and fairly easy way to do this? I have a Brother
> laser printer and an Epson inkjet, both have USB and ethernet
> connections.
>
>

If your printers really have Ethernet connections, then the solution is
to get a driverless wireless game adapter, such as the DLink DWL-G820.
Unfortunately, these are not the cheapest home wifi products. These
devices essentially replace a length of Ethernet cable with the wifi
link; if you already are using the printers over the network, the change
to using one of these should be transparent.

The alternative to the above is a USB wireless print server. I haven't
checked prices on these, but they are probably at least as expensive as
the game adapters. Further, these devices are sometimes not compatible
with certain printers, and typically will not permit any functions that
require 2-way communication between the printer and the computer (e.g.,
printer status messages).

Because you have two printers, a less expensive solution would be to get
an old Broadcom-based wireless router on eBay (e.g., Linksys WRT54G
version 4 or earlier; newer models can also be used, but with some
restrictions*), flash it with DD-WRT firmware
(http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv3/index.php) and set it up as a wireless
bridge. This will permit you to connect up to 4 network-ready devices
that will then be wirelessly linked to your main router. I currently
have both a Slingbox and a TiVo connected to the Internet via such a
bridge, and have had no problems for going on 2 years now.


* DD-WRT compatible hardware:
http://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Supported_Devices

--
Lem -- MS-MVP

To the moon and back with 2K words of RAM and 36K words of ROM.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Computer
http://history.nasa.gov/afj/compessay.htm