Print Servers

[jcwillia1]

Hey guys looking for advice...

Thanks to this forum I have a very nice and fast home network comprised of a Black Diamond router and gigabit switches where I need them.

The one part of my network that is still very bad is my printer. We bought a Canon MG3100 series (wifi printer) on sale a few years back and it works fine but it is SO. SLOW.

I would like to hook it up to my network via an inexpensive print server. Are there best practices? Is there one killer device that rules over all? My printer has relatively easy access to a gigabit router but it only has a USB port for direct connections.

This is the #2 best seller on Amazon and bit more than I want to pay but whatever...

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003CFATRE/?tag=snbforums-20

 

[TonyH]

Hi,
Does your printer receives decent signal level? My Canon mp990 is on WiFi, it prints without any issues. This one is on 2.4 GHz, -G mode. As soon as I
hit print button it starts printing. I never turn off the printer. It is always on stand- by . Printer itself is very slow I/O device by it's nature.

 

[jcwillia1]

Hi,
Does your printer receives decent signal level?

not sure how to tell

As soon as I hit print button it starts printing.

we have a good 60s lag between hitting print and print starting.

 

[azazel1024]

not sure how to tell



we have a good 60s lag between hitting print and print starting.

That may not have anything to do with wireless. My HP wireless printer is hooked up through ethernet (10/100 port) and even when it is fairly warmed up, if I hit print it probably takes...dunno, maybe 20 seconds before it'll start trying to spit out a print job. Doesn't matter if it is a 10kb text file or a 10MB PDF. If I had just turned it on and it wasn't fully warmed up, or if it was asleep and woke up, more like ~90-120s before it'll actually start trying to spit out pages.

 

[jcwillia1]

That may not have anything to do with wireless. My HP wireless printer is hooked up through ethernet (10/100 port) and even when it is fairly warmed up, if I hit print it probably takes...dunno, maybe 20 seconds before it'll start trying to spit out a print job. Doesn't matter if it is a 10kb text file or a 10MB PDF. If I had just turned it on and it wasn't fully warmed up, or if it was asleep and woke up, more like ~90-120s before it'll actually start trying to spit out pages.

thanks for the tip.

just as a comparison point - we don't notice the same delays when we're directly connected via USB.

 

[Dreamslacker]

If your printer sits near the router, your RT-N56U has a print server function.

 

[jcwillia1]

If your printer sits near the router, your RT-N56U has a print server function.

ugh unfortunately it does not.

any other ideas?

 

[Dreamslacker]

ugh unfortunately it does not.

any other ideas?

The TP-Link TP-PS110U works very well. I've even used it to network dot-matrix printers without a hitch.

Most printer servers will serve the job but you MUST make sure they are printer servers and not USB-network-sharing hubs. The latter can cause issues when more than 1 user tries to access the printer or driver settings cause the port to be locked onto their machine.