Converting USB Printer into a Network Printer

One of my good friend asked me how do you converta USB printer into a Network Printer.

Well Its really simple with many printers. I’ll discuss couple of techniques that you can use to do just that. But before discussing that I would like to tell you that you can share your printer if you got one machine as a dedicated server at your home. I will not be discussing that because there lot many article available on Google discussing just about how to do that. Lets take a look on couple of things that will allow us to convert a USB printer to a network printer.

First one is through your Modem or Modem/Routers Printer Server Port (Note that this option is not available with every Modem/Router/Gateway)

Second is to buy a NPS (network print server) device

Lets check out the harware you need for the first option.

Many modern Router Gateways have support for external USB devices such as making your USB storage available to the network or making you Printer available to the network. Such devices include many names but let me highlight couple of them here

DIR-655 XTREME N™ BROADBAND ROUTER WITH 4-PORT GIGABIT SWITCH (

http://www.dlink.com.au/products/?pid=530

)

Netgear DVG834N (

http://www.netgear.com.au/service-provider/products/routers-and-gateways/dsl-gateways/DVG834N.aspx

)

DIR-120 BROADBAND ROUTER WITH 4-PORT SWITCH & SINGLE USB PRINT SERVER (

http://www.dlink.com.au/products/?pid=766

)

there are heaps of them on the market. Search “Router with USB Print server”.

Lets check out the Hardware you need for the second option – A NPS

Now second option is only viable if you do not have the above option already in place at your home. Check out your product specification and try to see if the Printer support is already not present with your device. One more thing to understand is that Not all printers will work according to my readings and findings with NPS.

Below are some of the devices which I personally think are good fit in most of the cases.

D-Link DPR-1040 1 Port USB

Wireless

G Multifunction Print Server

TP-LINK TL-PS110U Printer Server Single USB2.0 Port –

Ethernet only

D-Link DPR-2000 4 Port USB Wireless G Multifunction Print Server

there are heaps more. It all depends what you choose and what your final requirement is.

Now that you’ve installed your Router gateway or NPS. Just connect your printer to the Printer USB Port of the device. Once you did that your printer will be available on Network and will be assigned an IP. You’ve to goto your Gateway’s administration console or any other network channel that is controlling the DHCP options for your Network. You can give a permanent IP to your Printer from there. Once connected normally your Printer will appear as connected device in your Gateways administration console normally accessible from http://192.168.0.1 or http://192.168.1.1 or http://10.0.0.1 try any of these. if its not working the open your command prompt and type ipconfig as shown below

Now check the IP shown for “Default Gateway” and type that into your browser. Check your product manual to check what’s the username and password for the Admin account for your Gateway. And follow the procedure to allocate an IP to your Printer.

Once you are done with allocating the IP then its really simple to add the printer to your system.

I am using windows 7 to configure my printer here but the instruction are pretty much same for all other windows OS

Learn how to connect and install an HP LaserJet Pro printer on a wireless network with a USB cable. More details-: https://t.co/3Zfq0rdDoh

— martincopx Mon Mar 04 11:25:11 +0000 2019

First up goto Start > Devices and Printers

Once the window shows up Right Click anywhere and click “

Add a Printer

”

A new window such as the one shown below will pop up

Click on “

Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer

”

One the Next screen if your printer won’t show up thats Ok just click on “

The Printer that I want isn’t Listed

”

You will see a screen shown below

Now Choose the 3rd option “

Add a printer using a TCP/IP address or hostname

”

You will see the screen below

Select “TCP/IP” Device type and type the IP address under the “

Hostname or IP address”

field.

In the

Port Name

box, type a port name, which can be any character string, or use the default name that the wizard supplies when you start typing your IP.

From here-on if the IP is correct then windows will detect the printer and install it for you. If it asks you for the device drivers please locate them from your printer disk.

There could be many things that could go wrong. If you have any questions please feel free to ask in the comments section. I am not an expert with networking issues but I will try to help ya.

This guide is intended only for people who understand basic networking terminology and for people who are looking to make their printer available from their home network.

Additional resources

I will write more about how to share and access a printer with your network. You can always make corrections to the article above if you think something can be improved or if something is wrong above just comment and I’ll make the change if i agree 🙂

Hope this helps

Cheers

Jas