Add A Wireless Printer
Adding a printer to your wireless network is a great idea for any home or business. The advent of Wireless printers resolved a lot problems with setting up a traditional printer that was plugged into the networked and needed to be configured and shared out.
Today most wireless printers are plug and play and can easily be set up by the technology challenged professional.
Instructions
1. In order for your printer to go wireless you need to purchase a wireless print server. Don't let the name scare you. All a print server does is it gives a place for you printer to plug into and acts as a beacon of communication to accept all print request. There are many print servers out on the market. For sake of functionality and compatibility my suggestion is that you purchase a print server that was made by the same company as your wireless router. In addition make sure your printer is supported by that print server. It saves you a world of misery when things are compatible.
2. Most of the newer print servers come with a setup cd, which takes the user through a wizard to connect and configure their print server. Just like setting up your wireless router you need to plug the print server into the network in the initial setup. The print server that I have is for a linksys router so I am going to guide you through a quick setup of that print server. Most print servers follow a similar track however I've chosen to use the popular brand to reach more people.
3. Running the install cd and setting up your password should be relatively easy, the tricky part is when you have to name your printer and set up the ip address. For sake of ease of use in the basic settings for the device name and domain name leave the settings alone as they will usually have a default name in the field.
Changing the name might cause conflicts with the network discovering the printer.
4. When setting up the ip address under the "set ip configuration manually tab" You need to input the following info for the network that the printer is being used on. IP ADDRESS: For linksys routers this is usually 192.168.1.254 For the SUBNET MASK: 255.255.255.0 is what most of all home routers use. For your routers IP address or gateway, you would use 192.168.1.1 which is often the default on the linksys routers. Once you've done that click next .
5. The next thing you would need to do is go to the "set print servers password" tab. This tab enables you to input your wireless network name, which is often referred to as the SSID, its channel and its network type. Usually I leave these alone as they only need to be configured if you only have a print server that is not using wireless router or access point.
6. Once you are done with that you have an option to set up a WEP key for your printer, only use this option if you have a WEP key for your network. If you've done this right you should receive a confirmation page telling you your setup was a success. Your setup should come with a set of drivers that will install to complete the rest of print servers configuration.
Once that is all done unplug the print server and the printer and put it in where ever you want. Send a test print to it to make sure the configuration took. If you have any issues you can message me. Enjoy!
Tags: print server, print servers, your printer, your wireless, print server that, server that, wireless router