A recent experience with a wireless print server that connects to a printer via USB has left me wary of using such print servers. USB-based print servers should be checked for compatibility with the printer you intend to use. This is not an off-the-shelf setup. Old parallel cable based print servers were less finicky about which printers you could connect. Getting incompatible printers and print servers can be costly because stores are not willing to refund your money; they would rather offer store credit. Moral of the story, really do your homework before trying a wireless print server that only connects via USB. I noticed that the printer had an both an ethernet and a USB connection in the back. This led me to realize that it had a built-in print server. I asked the business owner to bring a wireless bridge so that we could connect the printer to the wireless network as we had intended with the wireless print server. This would allow network traffic to the printer's built-in print server. The wireless bridge we wound up using was a 802.11g/n bridge made for "gaming". There is no major difference between a "gaming" bridge and standard bridge except that gaming bridges do not deal well with multiple IP addresses behind them, especially with DHCP. It is better to assign your printer a static IP and make it the only device connected to your bridge, like you would do with your gaming console. The most difficult part of a wireless bridge solution is that you need to set up the bridge so that it will connect with your router if you have encryption set. Beyond that, you will only need to install the printer drivers on all your workstations for that one printer. Most computers can handle network printers. There is no special setup on the workstations to account for the bridge; it is as if the bridge were not there. |