Wired office network printing

Derek W

Derek W

Derek W

Soldato
Joined
1 Oct 2008
Posts
12,941
Location
Designing Buildings
At the moment at work, we're running 4 pentium 4 2.4Ghz pcs on a wireless network (also have 2 pcs at the reception) 1pc is hardwired into an A1 plotter and if the other 3 pcs are wishing to plot then we connect to the pc wirelessly for the data to be transferred.

When the hardwired pc has a large drawing open (say 15mb) if someone else wants to print it can take anything up to 30 mins for the drawing to be sent.

Would reverting to a wired network be the solution for 'instant' printing? E.G run an ethernet cable from each pc to a wired hub which would be in turn be wired into the back of the printer.

Any advice appreciated.
 
With large files being printed then a wired network would be a benefit, there are some other factors to consider. Your printer may not have enough memory to cope with some of the jobs, see if your printer itself needs a memory upgrade as well.
 
Weazle said:
With large files being printed then a wired network would be a benefit, there are some other factors to consider. Your printer may not have enough memory to cope with some of the jobs, see if your printer itself needs a memory upgrade as well.
Click to expand...

I'm not convinced that anything needs to be done to the printer itself because its an HP Designjet 500 A1 plotter 24" and its the same as what I used in my previous place of work with lesser specs on the PCs but still printed quickly.

For the setup would it be connect each PC via LAN cable to a router (recommendations needed here) then the router connected directly into the back of the plotter?

Presumably after connecting the hardware its simple enough to get the software side of things set up without having to call a tech guy out? (I'm the office tech guy these days!)
 
Does your existing router have a built in switch? You should be able to use that for the wired network connections (assuming it has enough ports).

We have a similar setup here... PCs into a switch, and a Designjet 100 plugged into the switch (through a print server, as the DJ100 has not got a network port).

Setup was relatively straightforward... just needed the driver installing, setting to use a network printer port, and setting the IP address of the printer.
 
Right current the office has the 2wire 2700 wireless router as found here http://support.2wire.com/index.php?page=download

The router sits out at reception and is wired into the main recption pc as it doesn't have a wireless card but it is next to the phone / fax line (i forget which line it comes in on). The 4 office and one other reception pc are wirelessly connected to this router.
We do have a spare one of these routers as i think BT sent us two by mistake?!?! Dunno if that would be of any use or whether we need to go down the route of getting a separate switch as found here http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=46&catid=1626
 
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