Best way to serve printers?

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gnfb

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#205113 30-Oct-2016 15:32

Situation .My situation is that I have 4 printers (all usb connection) connected to my main windows machine.

I now wish to be able to print from another windows machine on the small network we have here.

I know that I can serve (have setup this ability up) the printers through windows to the other machine.

Having set them up to serve I thought I was set.

However I turned the other machine of and it seems to have lost the ability to see the machine.

Solved this problem by refreshing the access to the machine and re entering the password.

Question. Is it better, more efficient , just a better idea all round to get a stand alone "print server" for the 4 printers?

Thanks in advance for assistance or comments

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Hammerer

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#1660965 30-Oct-2016 15:41

I connect all my printers to the network - some cabled and some by WiFi - and have the router assign them fixed local IP addresses, e.g. 192.168.1.50, 192.168.1.51, etc. Then anybody can easily find them (to install print drivers) and print to them.

If your printers only have a USB connection then you can get network hubs to connect them to the network. If only one printer has only USB then I would replace it.

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#1660966 30-Oct-2016 15:48

will not having fixed IP cause problems? not sure how to do that on my hg659

1101

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#1661276 31-Oct-2016 10:42

joker97:

will not having fixed IP cause problems? not sure how to do that on my hg659

set the printers fixed IP well out of the usual DHCP range , eg, x.250 , x.249 etc
You can also set DHCP upper limit to say x.200

If its USB only printer, some routers support USB printers : good luck setting that up though :-)
Can can buy print server boxes, but no guarentees that you USB printers will work on it .

Also, a few of the cheapy printers will only do USB or Network, but not both .

gnfb

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#1661296 31-Oct-2016 11:06

Thanks for the suggestions and advice guys I will play around with them

I should mention the printers

2 x Dymo label writers

1 x Epson Receipt printer

1 x Fuji Docuprint

Is an English Man living in New Zealand. Not a writer, an Observer he says. Graham is a seasoned 'traveler" with his sometimes arrogant, but honest opinion on life. He loves the Internet!.

I have two shops online allshop.nz patchpinflag.nz
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