Wireless Printer and Ethernet Connection

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I have an HP wireless printer connected to my desktop via USB. It is also connected by ethernet cable to my router.

My wife sits across the room from me and is also connected to the router via ethernet cable. Neither of our desktops have a wireless card.

I would like to to wirelessly share the printer with her XP computer.

It seems to me the solution would be to install a wireless USB adapter on her computer and have it connect through the router to the printer.

I know very little about networking home computers and I’m just a bit paranoid; afraid that installing the USB adapter might somehow screw up the ethernet connection that we use and is currently working quite well. Preferably, I would like both of us to remain cabled to the router.

My question then is: It is probable that a wireless connection can be established from her desktop thru the router to the printer without screwing up her (or my) ethernet connection?

Hopefully, I’ve described my problem sufficiently, and asked the right question. :confused:

Jack

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Jack,

I’m a little confused. If the printer is connected to the router and her computer is connected to the router why do you think you need a wireless connection? Wireless at best is 50% slower than wired which will slow down her print jobs. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Jack,

I’m a little confused. If the printer is connected to the router and her computer is connected to the router why do you think you need a wireless connection? Wireless at best is 50% slower than wired which will slow down her print jobs. :cheers:

OK…apparently you know the answer to why I don’t need a wireless connection. :mellow:

The printer installation software gives me three choices: USB, Ethernet and Wireless. I have not been successful in using either Ethernet from her computer or, Wireless from my laptop. In the case of the laptop, the printer tells me that it cannot set up a wireless connection with an ethernet cable plugged in. I’ve found out that means even if the other end of the cable is unplugged; both ends have to be unplugged. Darned if I can figure out then how data gets from the router to the printer!

Any tips?

BTW, the printer is an HP6500A Plus.

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On your wife’s XP machine go to Control Panel > Printers and Faxes > Add a Printer. Click on Add a Printer and when the wizard appears choose, A network printer, or printer attached to another computer. Follow the wizard and you should be good to go.

JB

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>>The printer installation software gives me three choices: USB, Ethernet and Wireless. I have not been successful in using either Ethernet >>from her computer or, Wireless from my laptop. In the case of the laptop, the printer tells me that it cannot set up a wireless connection >>with an ethernet cable plugged in.

The printer may only allow one type of connection at a time.

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Jack,

Ok, Here’s what I would do. Disconnect the printer from the USB port and the Router. Delete the printer from both machines via Devices and Printers. Insert the Installation disk and run the install program and select networked and/or Ethernet when prompted. Connect the printer to the router ONLY when the installation program tells you to. Follow the rest of the prompts to get the printer fully installed. Make a note of the IP address assigned to the printer.

On the second machine run the installation program select Networked or Ethernet and when given the option specify the same IP address as was used on the first machine.

Here’s a link on HP’s site for solving Network problems. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Software uninstall and re-installation went smoothly. Entered IP address of printer when asked. Not sure why I need to tell the printer what its IP address is when it just told me!

Apparently, the router is not seeing the printer or vise versa. When I tried to print, error msg popped up saying it could not find the printer.

After an hour and 15 minutes with HP (in the Philippines) still no printer. But, they did offer me a $10 discount with free shipping on a black ink cartridge. :rolleyes:

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Jack,

Can you see files/folders on the laptop from your desktop and/visa versa?
Do you know how to get into your router software? If so I’d log in to the router and check it’s DHCP list and see if the printer IP shows up there. Pls. report back your findings. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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After reading this thread more closely I don’t think your set-up will work unless your router has a print server built in or you purchase a stand-alone print server. As far as I know the printer must be connected through a computer or a print server and not directly plugged into a router.

The other option would be to establish a home network and set up file and printer sharing. The drawback to this is that the computer the printer is connected to must be on for other computers to print.

JB

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>>After reading this thread more closely I don’t think your set-up will work unless your router has a print server built in or you purchase a
>>stand-alone print server. As far as I know the printer must be connected through a computer or a print server and not directly plugged >>into a router.

The printer HAS a print server built in. That’s how it is able to offer Ethernet and wireless connections.

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Jack,

Can you see files/folders on the laptop from your desktop and/visa versa?

I have given the laptop only cursory attention, preferring instead to get the two desktops talking to the printer first.

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Hi Jack,

Connect the printer to the router only, not with USB, to perform some basic networking diagnostics.
First verify the printer did receive an IP address in the range used by the DHCP server, 192.168.1.100 ~ 149.
Next, verify that the printer can be pinged from another PC connected to the router using Ethernet (I use 103 here as an example) in a command window:

Code:

ping 192.168.1.103

This should result in a few lines stating a reply has been received.

If this works, you know the PC and printer can “see” each other via the router.

FYI:
Normally, Ethernet-enabled printers communicate via the RAW protocol on TCP/IP port 9100. To address this, the printer installation creates a new printer port on the PC of type “Standard TCP/IP port”, which has the printer’s IP address as a parameter. When the port is created, Windows can query the IP address to see if it recognizes the print server device on the other side. Usually, this is a of generic type (I found that in general mostly HP JetDirect print servers are properly recognized, otherwise it will report a Generic Printer Device).
All of these steps are executed when you start the “Add printer” wizard on any XP or later Windows OS.

Hope this helps,

regards Eelco

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I have a wireless Canon Pixma printer that is connected directly to my router by ethernet cable. I do print wirelessly from both of my laptops to the printer using this method. I was having very intermittent wireless success and decided to try the printer to router direct connect and it does work well. To print from our desktop PC I simple plug in a USB cable from the printer to desktop PC which does NOT interupt the laptop printing capabilities.

To set up the printer I simply followed the instructions and used the software supplied by the printer manufacturer. I have had problems with HP in the past but perhaps they now offer this type s/w to install their printers properly.

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RG:

One would think installation and connection would be pretty much straightforward. But, I’ve learned that is not the case with most computer peripherals.

Looking at the router setup screen, I see that “Local DHCP Server” is enabled. Below that is a “Start IP Address” of 192.168.1.[blank] The “DHCP Address Range is 192.168.1.100 ~ 149.” There are three entries on the routing table. The first is the default gateway and interface is WAN. Second is IP to access router (LAN). Third is access to modem and internet and interface is WAN.

Looking at Security, I see that Anonymous internet requests are blocked; NAT Redirection is disabled and Port 113 is enabled. There are no other IP numbers on that screen. Likewise, the MAC filter screen is empty.

The router is set up to obtain IP automatically.

I find nothing else containing IP numbers. I do know the IP number for the printer.

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Enjoy,

I tried your suggestion to check the connection with a ping on my Brother HL-5370DW laser printer connected via cable to my Linksys router. The ping failed, see attached. This printer works via wire from my Desktop, my wife’s Laptop and 2 other PC one which dual boots Ubuntu Linux which also successfully prints to the printer. I also use my Dell laptop w/this printer via Wireless to the router. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Hi RetiredGeek,

did you notice the IP address you try to ping?
192.196.x.x is not a private IP range, so I am suspecting a typo.

Home networks commonly use 192.168.x.x or 10.x.x.x, those ranges are available for private networks and not in use by Internet servers, and all connections from internal PC’s to the internet are translated to the router’s external IP address via a method called NAT.
In short this works as follows (this deals only withh network addresses, I have left out DNS to keep it simpler):

[*]PC1 with IP address 192.168.1.100 requests an TCP/IP request (like a webpage request) from webserver WS1 on port 80.
The request comes from TCP/IP port 2304 (for instance), and is sent by the PC to the router, as the IP address of WS1 is not in the local subnet (to determine that, the subnet mask is used).
The router is the default gateway (the location to send packages to when the destination TCP/IP address can not be reached without routing). Two devices connected to the same Ethernet subnet can “speak” with each other without the use of routing through the default gateway.
[*]The NAT software in the router creates a new TCP/IP request on the WAN connection to WS1’s IP address, originating from TCP/IP port 65001 on the router’s WAN port.
[*]The webserver WS1 receives the request on its TCP/IP port 80, and sends its reply back to the home network’s external IP address to port 65001.
[*]When the response from WS1 returns at the router’s TCP/IP port 65001, the router knows it should forward the reply on the local network’s Ethernet back to PC1, port 2304.

This way, many PC’s in a private network can use a single external IP address to communicate with external servers.

I suspect you should use 192.168.1.104 for the printer.
When using 192.196.x.x the PC will attempt to route the ping request to the internet, as the destination address is not in your own network’s subnet (the command ipconfig will show you which IPv4 address is assigned to your PC’s network card, as well as the subnet mask and the default gateway, which should be your router’s IP address).

Regards,

Eelco

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Enjoy,

Right you are. My fat fingers get in the road again. My apologies for not checking the results closer. Worked fine when I typed the correct numbers. 192.168.1.104. :cheers:

May the Forces of good computing be with you!

RG

PowerShell & VBA Rule!
Computer Specs

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Hi Jack,
Try setting your printer to a static IP address just outside the range 192.168.1.100 ~ 149 that is allocated by DHCP, to something like 192.168.1.99. Sometimes it is best for a printer to be assigned a static address because with automatic addressing via DHCP, the IP address on the printer does not always remain consistently the same. I’ve seen this fix connection problems with network printers in several situations.

I am assuming you are using Windows built in network management system rather than a third party networking program such as Network Magic. Third party network managers can be problematic.

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Three + hours with 3 different HP techs finally solved the problem. Because the computer was not seeing the printer – for whatever reason – the last tech was able to finally change things around in TCP/IP to get the computer to see the printer. He was then able to install drivers and print and scan a test printout.

What an experience this has been!

Thanks to all for your help!

Be warned tho! I may be back when I attempt to get the laptop to connect wirelessly.

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