Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)The print server hardware worked fine, but the setup software
caused a few problems as a result of oversimplication.
I was able to get the server going with a Brother HL-5150D USB
printer on a home network with 4 computers (3 wireless, 1
ethernet), an all-in-one networked device and the USB
printer itself. This is using a mixture of computers with
different flavours of Windows XP. The print server is wired to
a router using DHCP. I did not chose to put the print server on
a static address (as the manual prefers) since that does not
reflect my network setup (home networks are usually DHCP).
I encountered problems because:
(a) My software firewall first caused the installer to crash.
I wanted to avoid turning it off entirely, but
to no avail. I was able to leave my router's hardware
firewall on but had to turn off my software firewall
for the installation. The manual asks that firewall
be turned off at installation, but I find that drastic.
I guess I should have cut off my internet connection when
I did this.
(b) I installed my printer drivers and print server back-to-back
without rebooting the computer in between. The manual
allows for this but I was not able to avoid the "the
segment of the print server is different from your
computer" error no matter what I tried. So I rebooted
and started the print server install a second time over.
Worked fine. The manual's guidance for this error was
incorrect in my case.
So, if what I've learned applies:
(i) install the printer driver as a normal USB
printer on your computers first.
(ii) reboot the computers
(iii) install the print server software.
Did this for all computers on the network, and
now I can print from anywhere (note that I did not
reconfigure the print server hardware each time, only
on the 1st computer, but I don't see the harm if one
does it for each computer as long as one is consistent
in placing the same settings each time).
(c) The installation of the print server software caused
my printer settings to go from "Use Printer Online"
to "Use Printer Offline". My printer swallowed all
my jobs because of that and no pages were coming out.
To remediate this go to the "Control Panel", "Printers",
"Viewed my installed printers",
right click the printer and select "Use Printer Online".
Did this for all computers.
Everything worked after that, with all firewalls reenabled.
Some day in the future, the network will go down
(power outage or other), and DHCP router might
assign a different dynamic IP address for the print server.
If that is the case, I'll have to point my computers to the
new IP address. To findout what your computer thinks the
printer address is: "Control Panel", "Printers",
"View installed printers", right click the printer and
select "Properties". Select the "Ports" tab,
then "Configure Port". Then compare the IP against the
new address your router gave to the print server
(go to your router's web page to find out). If they don't
match then you'll need to reconfigure. That said, I tested
a new IP address on the print server by power cycling it.
I then rebooted the computers and found that the new print
server address had been matched automatically on my
PCs. So things can fix themselves even if the network goes
down (the name of the port was still had the old address,
but the actual address it used was the new one...)
I've not tried this with IPP printing (remote location
printing, not did I test it under Linux or Mac).
The print server's web access is rather primitive.
But it has all I need. I intend to use this with Linux too.
The device worked as advertised and I am satisfied with it.
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