Connecting Printer To Ethernet Port on Router

[pp05]

Has anyone plugged their laser printer straight into ethernet port on thier router?

What do you need to do to get it working? is it relatively simple?

[Splash]

yes, I have my Laserjet 4 hook up via it's jetdirect card to my switch (which then connects through to my router, but that's moot point really). Does your printer have an ethernet card? If so all you need to do is find out the hostname of the printserver (which will be built into to card) and then setup a local print queue on your PC pointing the tcp/ip port to the hostname of the printer. That's assuming that you don't have a dedicated printserver.

[pp05]

It's an all-in-one HP laserjet printer model 2820 with usb and ethernet port on it as far as I know yet. We have no dedicated printserver yet, decidng whether to go that route or not.

p.s. it has no card.

[Flibb]

At work I have a single PC connected via a £10 hub to 3 printers. Works a treat.

[FatalSaviour]

p.s. it has no card.

What do you mean by this sorry?

[pp05]

I was responding to splashes question whether it had an inbuilt card or not. It just has an rj45 connection and USB.

[blueball]

If it has an RJ45 connection then surely it has a built in card?

[Splash]

yep, if it has an inbuilt ethernet port then you have a built in printserver. I wouldn't bother setting up a box as a printserver for such a small office, just setup direct ip printing on each machine.

[KermitTheFrog]

To find out the address of the network port, you should be able to print the configuration of the printer, while connected to the network, and then add it to your clients.

[Atomic]

If your network has DHCP (auto assigned IP addresses) then you should just be able to plug it into the network and then run the install CD on each machine and follow the instructions for network attatched.

Most modern HP CDs will find the printer and so its quite simple to do.

[pp05]

Ok, We have 1 ethernet wall socket supplied to us by the ISP who supplies the whole building with net for our net connection.

Would a switch paired with printserver device be simpler to setup? For example: http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop...?ProductID=303
with
http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/Shop...?ProductID=781

or is router better solution all round?

[Atomic]

Can I ask to why you seem to think you need a printserver?

[Splash]

He has a printer that only has a USB interface that will be too far away to simply hook up and share out from another machine. Obviously the Laserjet he has comes with it's Jetdirect card, and as such no printserver willbe needed for that.

EDIT - also the ethernet port that you gain internet access through is likely to be hooked up to a router, so a switch should be enough for you. Would advise spending a little more on the switch if it's to be used for an office, you don't want to have to be rebooting the switch every time you have to throw any large chunks of data around. Also bear in mind that any switch you buy will be using one port for uplink (ie the port that connects to the internet), as well as one for each printer and PC.

[pp05]

Presently we have a PC, A laptop, with a 2nd machine coming next week. Plus laserjet printer so that's 4 ports, plus one port for uplink. So 5 port device would cover it although I dunno how much difference is working enviroment with budget end devices. Just need something that can plug in and work from word go..

Splash how much more are you thinking, link like this?.. the boss is looking for entry level or as cheap as possible. Not much gets sent between machines but printer access and sharing the net is main reason.

[pp05]

Thanks Atomic and Kermit for your input.

[Splash]

Yep the 3com stuff tends to be pretty stable, and that switch is aimed more at offices than the other one.

The only other thing I would say is are you completely sure that that will be all you need (ports-wise)? Are you certain that you'll not have anyone visiting the site or anything like that? Personally just for capacity for future I'd look into spending a little more and getting an 8-port switch.