Networking printer help

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Hi guys, I was wondering if anyone could help me.

I'm trying to set up a home business that is going to involve alot of design work which will need printing out. I'm planning on doing it on my laptop instead of my PC.

At the moment my setup is that the PC is connected to the (Sky) Netgear router via a network cable with the printer (Epson R220) connected to the PC via a ISB cable. The laptop connects to the router using wireless.

I would like to keep the setup the same is possible, but I want to be able to use my printer wirelessly (so when I click the 'print' button it will then send the documents to the printer). I'm sure I've seen a way of doing this, but for teh life of me I can't remember where or how.

My PC is on permanantly if that helps.

Cheers

 

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Stevie,

you need to share the printer over the network, give it a name and then add the printer via the share on the laptop. Set it as your default printer et voila wireless printing.

 

^^ Give that man a gold star.

Perfectly sound advice. One thing to bear in mind though...

Make the IP of your printer and laptop static. It will ensure the printer will not re-assign itself a new IP address when your router switches off or your printer decides to go to sleep It basically keeps the network nice and tight.

To do this:-

Print a test page from your printer once it is shared to display its current IP address.

Access your network properties and tick the "Manual" instead of "DHCP" option, and assign it an address 192.168.1.222 (for instance).

Next go into printer settings - ports tab - add port - click "standard tcp/ip port" then click new port. Type in a new IP for the printer - apply.


Once your printer has been assigned a static address and the printer driver is installed, right click on the printer and go to Properties. Click on the Ports tab, followed by Add Port. Click on the "Standard TCP/IP Port" type, followed by New Port. Click next on the wizard, and type in the new IP address of the printer, and follow the wizard to the end. Close and Apply those changes.

Voila!

Hope this helps. If you're still unsure then let us know.

 

If you are going to do that then you should really go into the router config and mark that address as fixed, and not to be handed out by DHCP!

IMHO on most home networks the NetBIOS name search is good enough, and you don't need to resort to fixed IPs. A corporate network is a different matter....

Harry.

 

Thanks for the advise guys.

As for making the printer IP static, I don't think I need to do that as the printer is connected to the PC via ISB. I assume that I would only need to do that if I was using a printer port thingie such as the Netgear PS121 so that it was running on it's own port on the Router?

I've managed to get teh laptop printing through the wireless network now

Now just gotta reformat it as I have just got it back from a friend borrowing it (who had it over a year ).

 

Totally correct. I'm just picky and like to have everything bolted down and working (I've had numerous problems with my router restricting ports which my laptop is trying to use) and fixed IPs do it for me... plus I'm still at work so I'm probably only thinking "Printer must be connected via ethernet then shared".

 

You are correct, the Printer wont get an IP address as it is not directly connected to the network, all printing requests will go to the PC that hosts it and it will punt the information to the printer as required.

If you want to dot the "I"'s and cross the "T"'s setting the hosting PC with a static IP would be nice but, as hbroomhall said, not necessary on a network your size

Well done on getting it all up and running.

 

I like dotting i's and crossing t's. Otherwise words sometimes come out in a very strange fashion.

For instance - little would be llllle.

 

I was going to ask a question but I figured it out...so ignore this post lol

 

Problem with these print servers is that if your printing large coloured graphics the printing is going to be very slow and you may encounter other issues with buffering because these print servers or home colour printers don't carry enough memory.

I used to use something like a keyspan USB server, its still slower but gets around several issues.

AC