Hi,
I’m just breaking into networking hardware so I’d like to describe what I need and see who can put a name to device that gives the best solution. I’d like to buy my dad a wireless printserver. But then I got to thinking, What would be better is something like a ethernet connected USB hub that has wifi abilities. Specifically what I’d like most out of the end result is a way to printer to his printer in his study from anywhere in the house and to also create a cloud type environment for my dad to store all his stuff. I plan on doing the “cloud” bit by connecting a small hard drive via USB, but have no idea how this would be accessible from a different location. And so the device would need more than one USB port I’m thinking.
He’s old and doesn’t want to change his AT&T gateway so a new router with printserver abilities built in and additional USB ports isn’t an option. It’s going to have to be some kind of add-on network device that plugs in via Ethernet and has wifi abilities with more than one USB port( at least 2.0) that could enable prinserving abilities and could be logged into to grant access to an additional storage drive.
Your two functions were hard drive and printer sharing/serving.
The name of one box for that is NAS with print server
The term NAS extends up to corporate sized expensive network hard drives,
and everything down to just putting a USB drive onto the network. The key point is that the common at home NAS is for putting multiple hard drives INSIDE… not USB attached. So you want a NAS which takes the USB hard drive, right ?
Well, it’s really a moot point with how I attach the HDD. I have access to either kind. I had just assumed an external drive would be the better way to go. I suppose if there was a fire or something you could quickly detach it and get out of the house. Stupid example, but I was only thinking in terms of portability. An internal drive is not really a “deal breaker” though. Most importantly is functionality, then comes price.
Depending on the quality of the current printer, it might make more sense to buy a network-enabled printer; then you’re far less likely to have compatibility issues.
Western Digital have a line of “MyBook Live” drives that I don’t mind using. A bit slow, but decent software and size for the price, and reasonably easy to use. (I might be jaded by my Synology though, which if your budget allows I’d definitely examine.)
Yeah, a NAS with print server is the “official” way to do this, I suppose. But you can also get a router with a built-in print server and USB access, and then connect it to your existing AT&T gateway so they’re part of the same network. The configuration may or may not be complicated in that case, so depending on how good you are with computers, you may wish to skip that path…
Last I checked, Apple’s expensive but extremely well reviewed Airport Extreme can do all of the above, and also be set to a “bridge mode” so it doesn’t split up your existing network, just ride on top of it and add a printer/hard drive. Other, cheaper routers can do the same thing, but I can’t remember which specific ones offhand.