Wireless Printer 1

[eyec]

my daughter is in college and her printer died. i was thinking of getting a wireless printer and setting it up so her other 2 room mates could also print to it.

anyone familiar with the possibility of doing this without the entire dorm being able to send print jobs to the printer????

TIA

 

[goombawaho]

You have to have a router then enable security and set up the printer to login to the wifi with the password. The real issue is having a router on the school network. You're already behind a router on the school network, so you'd have a situation of having a router behind a router IF you wanted to get your internet connection through your PERSONAL router.

That would work if configured properly, but maybe the best way of doing it is just configuring the printer to the router and then having the students log into the router only to print rather than having their internet connection through the router as well.

 

[eyec]

thanks for the info
i have a spare wireless router that i can set up to handle that part.
so, then all i would have to do is set MAC only access?

 

[goombawaho]

I wouldn't set up MAC address filtering though you could do it that way. Why not just WPA or WPA2 security for the wireless laptops and the wireless printer.

I guess you could do NO security but just limit it to the MAC addresses of the roommates and the printer.

 

[BionicJohn]

Are you sure you can actually hook up a router to the college's network?

My son added a switch and a wireless access point in his college, and then got into trouble for having too many IPAdresses/unidentified devices off his network socket.

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[eyec]

i will have to check on the college IT rules before i hook it up

 

[goombawaho]

That's what I was trying to say - don't hook it up to the college's network at all. Just have a separate network for the laptops and the wireless printer that is only used for printing.

This is NOT the ideal solution, but it would work. Regardless of whether they LET you connect a router to their network, that is not the ideal configuration either because of having a router behind a router and DHCP, gateway, etc. issues.

 

[eyec]

thanks, i will just make it a stand alone for the room mates.

 

[BadBigBen]

you could always hook up a wireless print server to the printer (both USB and parallel versions exist), and configure it, instead of using a router and a network printer...

example:

Wireless-G PrintServer with Multifunction Printer Support

http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-G-Pr...TF8&s=electronics&qid=1265125894&sr=8-1-spell

Linksys WPS54GU2 Wireless-G Print Server for USB 2.0

http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-WPS54...4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1265125913&sr=8-4

Ben
"If it works don't fix it! If it doesn't use a sledgehammer..."
How to ask a question, when posting them to a professional forum.
Only ask questions with yes/no answers if you want "yes" or "no"

 

[goombawaho]

That's a good option and suits your purpose more directly. Don't know if the price is better or worse, but that might be a factor which way you go.