Wireless printers & USB

[Roger Ford]

Anyone tried connecting a printer by wireless and USB at the same time?

 

I run two networks at home, one connected to work and one for home PCs. I'd like a printer that I can access from either. If I can connect the main work PC via USB, and have the home PCs connect via wireless, that would solve the problem. I *think* this will probably work, but I'm not certain.

 

Also any recommendations for colour wireless laser printers? I'm considering the Samsung CLP-325W. Actually, I guess it doesn't necessarily need to be wireless - a wired network connection would be OK as well.

[Jonathan Kay]

Roger, I thought your rôle in BC was to answer this sort of question, not ask them. :-)

 

There's a comment from Epson here saying at least one of their printers can do this. It's the sort of issue I'd want to be very sure of on the exact model before committing.

 

Haven't used a colour laser printer for years. At home I currently have an HP monochrome laser printer and an Epson all-in-one inkjet/ scanner. Do you only need printing, and do you need "photo quality"?

 

Jonathan

[keybaud]

I guess it all depends if the printer can handle print requests from both locations simultaneously. i.e. The printer will need to be designed to use both, whereas I'd hazard a guess that manufacturers probably do one or the other.

 

Of course, if you wirelessly connect to the printer whilst it is attached to your work PC, that is an electronic attack path to your work network. It depends on how secure your work network needs to be, as to whether this is acceptable or not.

[Lee Fowler]

Roger I have a second hand HP CP2025dn laser printer and have others drop me a PM.

 

Lee

[Roger Ford]

Roger, I thought your rôle in BC was to answer this sort of question, not ask them

😬

Haven't used a colour laser printer for years. At home I currently have an HP monochrome laser printer and an Epson all-in-one inkjet/ scanner. Do you only need printing, and do you need "photo quality"?

I have a good all-in-1 injket which I'd keep, but it's rather slow. Suppose I could get a mono laser but I do find that most things I print benefit from colour.

Of course, if you wirelessly connect to the printer whilst it is attached to your work PC, that is an electronic attack path to your work network.

True. But I'll be impressed if any hacker can get via the printer through a USB connection into my PC and thence onto the network. It's a theoretical risk, I agree, but probably not a major one. But in case the company's netcops are reading this, I definitely won't be doing it.

 

Lee - YHM.

[Jonathan Kay]

How about using DropBox or something similar to create a single queue to serve both networks? Might need a bit of scripting. But that would let you use any printer...

 

Jonathan

[Roger Ford]

It's an interesting idea. Does dropbox work over HTTP and via a proxy server? If not, then I'm not going to be able to access it from my work network, so that won't fly. Suspect it might need quite a lot of scripting in fact! But it's something I could try with the current printer.

[tbird]

as a possible alternative, its also got an ethernet port, so another option may be set up wireless and ethernet , or indeed USB and ethernet,

 

Tim