Wireless Printing using Additional Router?

Not sure on all the terminology, so please bear with me...I have a USB color laser printer that works great and I do not want to generate the waste by replacing it with a printer that has built in wifi capabilities. I have moved it to a location where I am unable/unwilling to run a cable. Currently, I have to drag a laptop to that location and connect in order to print.

I would like to have a wireless connection the printer to so that I can print from any computer without having to drag a laptop around and hook it up or have a dedicated and always on computer to act as a print server. Is this possible? Looking at wireless print servers they do not seem to be $ friendly and most have at best a mixed bag of reviews. It seems that I might be able to use a nearly free second wireless router to transmit data from my main router to the second router and have the printer plugged into the second router. But, I've seen something that makes me think having this setup will reduce my already slow internet connection by 50%. Any knowledge from the hive to share?

In reply to Datsun1500:

Thanks! I hadn't thought of using it that way. Everything I've seen online is about using the second router as a repeater and/or to extend range which I don't need to do and adding a printer. Now I need to find a cheap/free router with a USB connection for the printer.

Whoa whoa hold up, what Datsun1500 described will work for a networked printer. If your printer only has a USB port that's a whole different ball game. You'd need a whole computer or one of those expensive wireless print boxes to act as a print server.

Edit: A router could act as a print server, I've seen it done with open firmwares, I don't know if any factory firmware can do this though. Don't expect this way to be easy!

You must be using routers with print server capability (I checked and some do have it from the factory). If you just stick any ol' USB printer into any ol' router it won't work. If you didn't know this...you got lucky.

Well maybe 100% of routers with USB ports now have a print server feature and I didn't notice, but I'd do a quick check before buying just to be sure.

In reply to Datsun1500:

Will a regular cigarette lighter power inverter run the router and the printer at the same time, or do you have a heavy duty inverter, or more than one cigarette lighter power port?

I have an older copy machine that has a USB plug (higher end had network capabilities)... at my last house I left an old netbook that I picked up on CL for $40 hooked up to it and made it a shared printer over the wifi network... worked well outside of the needing the occasional reboot.. Linux would prob have helped on that though.

but these days we've got stuff like this made for exactly what you are asking about http://www.netgear.com/images/wn3500rp_ds_25feb1318-61518.pdf

if you picked the right router (one with usb printer sharing) with ddwrt firmware you could turn it into a bridge... just make sure the firmware keeps the USB plug working... it doesn't work on my netgear that I flashed... but at least it works much more stable :)

oh as for slowing your connection... if it is used as a range extender it will be using 1/2 of the networks bandwidth... if it was wireless G you are talking 54mbps... so in reality you shouldn't see any real effects of slowing internet speed unless you are running fairly fast internet... and if the network is working on wireless n or ac the base network speed is even faster so the cutting in 1/2 would be even less of an issue... it would make a difference though if you are transferring files from one computer to another via wifi

Pulled from a friend's twitter account. Something somebody did to a neighbor's unsecured wireless printer

gotta jump in and ask a related question: can i just plug my cheap 5 year old $40 HP printer into the USB port on my 2 month old Netgear wireless router and use it to print stuff from my Samsung Tab 10.1 tablet or from the PC that is hardwired to the router?

if so, how would one set this up? also, would it print from the PC faster than it does now, since it seems like it wants to think for a minute before deciding if it wants to either print stuff or not?

novaderrik wrote: gotta jump in and ask a related question: can i just plug my cheap 5 year old $40 HP printer into the USB port on my 2 month old Netgear wireless router and use it to print stuff from my Samsung Tab 10.1 tablet or from the PC that is hardwired to the router? if so, how would one set this up? also, would it print from the PC faster than it does now, since it seems like it wants to think for a minute before deciding if it wants to either print stuff or not?

http://www.netgear.com/assets/landing/readyshare/ReadySHAREPrintUM.pdf

from what I understand it just allows the computer to connect to it over the network... but it requires you to install the drivers on the device you want it to print from... so if you can get the drivers setup on the tablet then yes it could work... but honestly I don't have any direct experience as I've been to lazy and just let the computer do my printing

novaderrik wrote: gotta jump in and ask a related question: can i just plug my cheap 5 year old $40 HP printer into the USB port on my 2 month old Netgear wireless router and use it to print stuff from my Samsung Tab 10.1 tablet or from the PC that is hardwired to the router?

Short answer is YES. I have a somewhat similar set up. I have a desktop computer and a laser printer in my office. They both are wireless connections to the network. My wife has a laptop that she carries all over the house. Our old XP desktop and R320 printer are in the basement hardwired to the Netgear 6300 router.

We can use either printer from any of the computers. The only caveat is as donalson has said "The printer drivers for each printer have to be installed on each of the computers".

novaderrik wrote: gotta jump in and ask a related question: can i just plug my cheap 5 year old $40 HP printer into the USB port on my 2 month old Netgear wireless router and use it to print stuff from my Samsung Tab 10.1 tablet or from the PC that is hardwired to the router? if so, how would one set this up? also, would it print from the PC faster than it does now, since it seems like it wants to think for a minute before deciding if it wants to either print stuff or not?

If you reflash it with custom linux based firmware(i.e dd-wrt) I'm almost positive you could set up a proper print server.

mad_machine wrote: Pulled from a friend's twitter account. Something somebody did to a neighbor's unsecured wireless printer

Reminds me of a trick someone did with their N900 (phone)

He had an SSH server on the phone so he could control it from another computer. He left the phone in the room with his friend (who is terrible with computers), looked through the webcam and used espeak commands to make it say something like "I have become self-aware. Go ahead and tell anyone, they'll never believe you."

Through the webcam he could see the guy looking at the phone with sheer horror, but he never said anything about it XD