Printer Sharing On A Wired/wireless Network

[dkchew]

Looking for intellectual help out in cyber space. Please help.

This is my system. 5 PCs running XP Pro w/SP2 on a wired/wireless LAN. 3 are wired and the other 2 are sharing broadband connection via a D-Link DWL 7100AP acccess point. 1 has a DWL-520 PCI adapter and the other a DWL-G520. Has 1 printer linked to the LAN through a hub, 3 others through a Hawking print server and the other 2 connected directly to its own PC. All PCs can access the net but the wireless units cannot 'see' the printers on the network.

How can I get them to connect to the printers?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

[bailey]

did you try installing the printers on them ?

[glc]

Have you installed the Hawking software on all the machines? This needs to be done to set up the print server ports to print to - then you have to use the add printer wizard, local printer, do NOT automatically detect plug and play printers, and then choose the print server port, not LPT1.

[dkchew]

Bailey and GLC:

Thanks for the replies. Soemhow, I managed to solve the problem. This is what I did.

I use the XP Pro Network Task module. Copied the files on to a USB drive and loaded it to the other machines. Now both machines can assess all the printers on the network.

However, there is something else which I cannot explain. I can see all the machines when I hit the "See Workgroup Computers", except for one printer and one machine. The funny thing is that when I hit the same button on the 'missing' machine, I see all the machines except for itself. I cannot see that one printer probably because it was accorded a static IP. My access point DHCP is disabled, so maybe it can only see one machine at one time.


Regards,

Dominic Chew.

[glc]

I always disable DHCP on access points and assign them a static IP in the correct subnet. What are you using for a router?

[dkchew]

GLC:

I am using an Asante FR3004LC.


Regards.

[glc]

Have you changed the default IP for the router itself - and the DHCP pool range? If not, assign the access point 192.168.123.250, subnet mask 255.255.255.0, gateway 192.168.123.254. The Hawking must be in that subnet also, with DHCP or a static outside the DHCP pool range. No matter what, the Asante should be able to handle all IP assignments unless you turn DHCP off. You can assign statics to whatever devices you want - if you do, computers need to have DNS assigned (use the actual DNS from the Asante WAN status page), I don't trust DNS transfer using NAT. Print servers and access points do not need DNS.