Wireless printing
 

I have a belkin wirelss router connected to an NTL modem.

I use a laptop wirelessly. What I would like to do is have a printer set up in another room and also an external hard drive that I could access from my laptop wirelessly without attaching by cable to the router or laptop.

Is this possible?

If yes, what equipment would I need and and how would I set it up.

You can probably guess I am not an expert.

Any help appreciated.

Regards Bill

Re: Wireless printing
 

Bill if you have a pc thats connected to the printer and router then you can do windows printer sharing, bit annoying to setup but it can be done.

with regards to the external hd you can share that as well but you would have to share the drive.

Re: Wireless printing
 

Hi

I do not really want to connect to the laptop. Is there some way that a wireless signal can be sent from the wireless router to another router or something that can have the printer and hard drive attached?

Re: Wireless printing
 

You could do it with a NAS unit with a built in print server, such as a Buffalo Linkstation.

- however, as far as I know, you would have to connect it to your wireless router using an ethernet cable.

Re: Wireless printing
 

new printers come with wireless IP. Canon do a range at a good price. Alternatively, does your printer have a USB port that supports wireless printing over Bluetooth? mine does. It's handy from the phones, but Printing my photography from over the bluetooth protocol takes ages, thus I just plug mine into the main machine and share it on the network.

Re: Wireless printing
 

I had a Belkin wireless print router. When it worked it was fine but it often decided to lose it's settings which meant I had to run a 25m CAT5 cable between it and the main router to re-establish all the settings. I eventually put a hammer through it......:dozey:

Re: Wireless printing
 

I have a Buffalo LinkStation Live and I do exactly this! A folder on the NAS is shared and accessable by anyone with the correct password, or no password if you wish and I have a USB printer connected to the NAS so all wireless clients can print.

Re: Wireless printing
 

Thanks for confirming that :tu:

Re: Wireless printing
 

Quite a few printers now are available with either wired or wireless networking.

Even the wired ones can be connected to a wireless router and then printed to from a wireless client.

Re: Wireless printing
 

True, but the OP wants storage, as well as printing, which is why a NAS with a print server built in should cover both requirements :)

Re: Wireless printing
 

True just dont buy a generic NAS believe me its not worth the hastle.

Also While Accessing the NAS over wi-fi will indeed work the speed won't be all that great so it might be worth asking what kind of stuff the OP wants to store on the NAS.

If it's just documents and photos it will be fine but if they are constantly using Large media files or want to run programs over the network then the link between the Laptop and the Nas needs to be a lot faster.

Also the OP didn't specifiy if they had a printer or needed one if it's the latter then one with network printing support isn't always that much more expensive.

I just bought a mono laser printer with network support for £46 (assuming misco accept the order, since their price is about £20 lower than most other online merchants)

Re: Wireless printing
 

Yes, I agree, most of the reviews I have read seem to say that speeds using a wireless router connected to a NAS are not brilliant.

If it was only a printing solution which was required, it would be a lot simpler - good luck with getting your order filled :tu:

Re: Wireless printing
 

Thanks.

Reason why i said avoid the generic nas is I had one and it was forever locking up. (was a Black "dual hdd nas")

WLan thoughput will prob be in the reigon of 8- 20Mbit/s maybe slightly higher if the PC is right next to the router.

Re: Wireless printing
 

And they're not compatible with all printers (no mention of this on the box when you buy it - only when you've spent several fraught days trying to get the damn thing to work - and eventually contact Belkin for support).

Re: Wireless printing
 

Heh......and it's even more fun when your main PC is running XP64 and HP don't support 64bit on the printer you are trying to get to work on a wireless network :D

Re: Wireless printing
 

Only reason I was after a printer with the network card built in, If it's designed for that printer then one knows its going to work with that printer.

These USB print server things are a bit iffy espcailly if the printer wants bi-directional communications.

Re: Wireless printing
 

hi , would some thing like this help you

Belkin Network USB Hub £59.99

http://www.argos.co.uk/static/Produc...t%3EBELKIN.htm

i have one with a hd and some othere bits as well .

daz300

Re: Wireless printing
 

Depends on the Driver support i'd imagine.

It's slightly cheaper online but by the time you pay P&P not much though.
Might be worth paying the extra couple £ and getting it from a bricks and morter store.

Dunno about computer hardware but argos are usally quite good at taking things back if they don't perform as expected.

Off topic:

Got the email from Misco looks like they've accepted the order, My Mail providers spamfilter had forgotten my settings and had it in holding :rolleyes:

Re: Wireless printing
 

you can get the belkin wireless network usb hub, dabs.com has some at good price £60. it is very good and i cannot fault it one bit.

Re: Wireless printing
 

Isnt that the same one Daz300 posted for £60 in argos (which providing theres an argos local that has them in stock would be quicker than waiting for dabs to deliver)

Re: Wireless printing
 

yer sorry :P cant read properly :P

you should get one, they are fantastic. just install drivers and your away, works with everything imaginable. only problem is hard drives are a bit slow (700 mb in 4 mins?) compared to usb2 but it's wireless and it's great!

Re: Wireless printing
 

What about the Driver support though, does it support Vista x64.

Interesting but I've got an old Desktop I use as a NAS (I have about 6 HDDs in it which would look messy all in USB caddys)

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/140153

saying that you can get a dual core Xeon server for under £120 thesedays so at somepoint I may replace the Desktop pretending to be a server with a proper Server since the desktop soetimes plays up only reason i kept it was becuase it had a big enough case to fit all my spare drives in (its a 3800x2 )

I've already got a proliant rackmount server and so far i've not had any problems with it (Not at home, its co-lo'd elsewhere)

Re: Wireless printing
 

i think the dirvers for the netwrok hub are x64, not 100% sure though, but even if they were you still need x 64 drivers fpr your devices you will be using with it

Re: Wireless printing
 

depends on the devices stuff like drives doesnt usually need a driver ;)

I think we are getting rather off topic here.