Wireless Printers

Posted on: October 6th, 2008

I just got a couple of questions about setting up a wireless printer. This reminded me to write an article about it because there are couple of misconceptions in this subject that worth clearing up.

First of all let me clarify what case you would need a wireless printer: the only time a wireless printer is needed is if your router and your printer is too far away to be connected with a network cord.

Why? Because wired connections are always more reliable than wireless connections. This is one of the basic tenets in networking. Here’s how network printing works:

The laptop sends the print job to the printer via the router. Both the Printer-Router and the Laptop-Router connection can be wired or wireless.

A wireless printer is just a network printer that is capable of connecting to a router wirelessly.

As you can see all traffic goes through the router. As long as your computer is connected to the router either with a network cable or wirelessly you will be able to print to the printer. So, if you have a wireless laptop but your printer is just a regular wired network printer you still will be able to print to it sitting in the kitchen.

Wired and wireless printer servers

These are little adapters that make it possible to use a regular printer (having only a USB, or the older Paralell connection) as a network printer.

My experience with these is that they don’t worth the money. They are expensive (around $70) and temperamental. It’s usually better to buy a printer that has network capability than retrofitting your old printer.

Sharing Printers

This is the oldest method of making a printer a network printer. Windows (except for the most ancient versions) has the ability to share a printer physically connected to the computer. It can allow other computers in the network to send print jobs to it via the local network.

An example: you have a desktop computer with a laser printer connected to it via a USB port. You set it up to share this printer on the network. You have a laptop that connects wirelessly to your network. If properly set up you will be able to print to that laser printer from the laptop as long as:
- The laptop is connected to the network
- The desktop is turned on and connected to the same network
- The printer is on and properly connected to the desktop.

However this is a fairly simple and inexpensive way of sharing your printer on your network it has that limitation that the computer to which the printer is connected to has to be on, otherwise no printing will happen.

The advantage of having a printer with network connection capabilities is that it eliminates the dependence on any computer on the network thus lessening the chance of printing problems.

The most dependable network printing setup is a wired network printer that is directly connected to your router.

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