Cheapest way to connect a printer onto network wirelessly

Golf1.6

Golf1.6

Golf1.6

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I've acquired a very good colour laser from a site dedicated to providing stuff for free. I.e. stuff you dont want - you list for local people to get.

The printers pick up roller was dirty and would report a paper jam error after failing to pick up the paper from the tray. So the owner didn't want it. I picked it up, narrowed down the problem area (manual tray would work), Googled and found I should just try wiping the rollers with a damp cloth. Voila, working flawlessly!!

Great luck :)

Anyway, the printer is about 6 years old and does not have wifi. Works fine connected to LAN

I need to get it connected cheaply. I guess I need a wifi switch of some sort, LAN is not my forte. What's the device that I need which will allow the printer to connect to my router modem and thus connect to the network?
 
A few years ago I bought a wireless print server for about £10 used on ebay. Maybe something to look into. My old Netgear model has 2 USB ports and 4 LAN ports and worked across both printers. The only issue I had was with a MFD which struggled but my simple laser works a treat.
 
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I have a TP-Link router at home, that has a USB port on it which is designed for printer sharing over Wi-Fi, I don't suppose your router has a similar USB solution? It would be a convenient turn of events if it does. :p
 
Acme said:
I have a TP-Link router at home, that has a USB port on it which is designed for printer sharing over Wi-Fi, I don't suppose your router has a similar USB solution? It would be a convenient turn of events if it does. :p
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Printer has both an ethernet and USB connection. But I don't have any space in the home for the printer. I will place it in the shed and hook it up to power using a power extension when I need stuff printed and then disconnect it.

It's a proper commercial office printer so just not feasable to have in the home right now.
 
Tealc said:
A few years ago I bought a wireless print server for about £10 used on ebay. Maybe something to look into. My old Netgear model has 2 USB ports and 4 LAN ports and worked across both printers. The only issue I had was with a MFD which struggled but my simple laser works a treat.
Click to expand...

Thanks, print server was the phrase I was looking for. Any specific models? I have a tplink router so I should probably stick to the same brand. My tp link switch had problems connecting to the ISP router so I bought an aftermarket tplink router as well.
 
You could get something like a TP-Link TL-WR702N. This is a little unit that has many uses, one being that it can act as a wireless client and then anything connected to the ethernet port on it would be connected to the network as a wireless client, but the device only needs to have a wired ethernet port.

Another device which does the same thing (I use it on my bedroom TV to connect it via its ethernet port to my home wireless) is the ZyXEL WRE2205 N300.

Both solutions should be under £20.
 
The one I have is rather old and therefore I would not recommend it, hence why I didn't give you the model number. It doesn't even support wpa2.
 
pepp77 said:
You could get something like a TP-Link TL-WR702N. This is a little unit that has many uses, one being that it can act as a wireless client and then anything connected to the ethernet port on it would be connected to the network as a wireless client, but the device only needs to have a wired ethernet port.

Another device which does the same thing (I use it on my bedroom TV to connect it via its ethernet port to my home wireless) is the ZyXEL WRE2205 N300.

Both solutions should be under £20.
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Thanks googled it. it's not going to be plug and play I image. I'll have to connect it onto a laptop first and then select the wifi network to always connect to by browsing to 192.168.1.1 and after that's sent then I connect the printer to it. Correct?
 
Golf1.6 said:
Thanks googled it. it's not going to be plug and play I image. I'll have to connect it onto a laptop first and then select the wifi network to always connect to by browsing to 192.168.1.1 and after that's sent then I connect the printer to it. Correct?
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Correct. Either will need an initial bit of setup (took me 5 mins to do) then that's it.
 
Thanks, can pick this up from the high street as well which is brilliant. I was a bit confused because the illustration on the product was showing it as being used exclusively as a laptop wifi device.

edit: removed bit about range. New router is brilliant and gives signal all the way up to the back of the garden.
 
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