As ever with asking on a forum I have spent so much time on this not making progress I'm going slightly crazy.

OK, I have a network with a 2865 at its heart and all is good. It replaced the worthy 2860n after we upgraded the wifi.

We now have a very old USB only inkjet printer, and I thought of putting it on the network using the 2860 as a print server. Before I changed anything I plugged the 2860 into the network and found it under External Device, great - but it was the 1.1 IP address and that woudln't do.

So I connected the printer to the 2860 and can see it under its USB Device Status - Printers. I have disabled internet access and changed the IP address away from 1.1 and when I plug the 2860 into the network I can find it with its new IP.

What I can't find is the printer - and I have to say I have been making up as I go on most of this already so I'm not sure what I'm dong anyway.

So a couple of Questions - Is it even possible to turn the 2860 into a switch *and* have it show the printer connected via USB and work as a print server - I know you are supposed to disable DCHP - which I have also done. But now I can't find the 2860 under External Device on the 2865.

Any help would be pathetically greatfully received.

Cheers

Chris

Have you enabled Bonjour on the 2860?

I just have and I can see the 2860 on the 2865 but still no sign of the printer

Oh and thanks

C

So a couple of Questions - Is it even possible to turn the 2860 into a switch *and* have it show the printer connected via USB and work as a print server - I know you are supposed to disable DCHP - which I have also done

The answer to that is "YES", but remember to give the 2860 LAN a fixed IP address. You're going to access the printer as a 'port' on the 2860's IP address - the printer itself doesn't get an IP address...

See the Vigor 2860 User Guide V4.5 (Section 1-2-2 "Installing USB Printer to Vigor Router")

Those instructions use a standard unix 'LPR' port, rather than Bonjour . Bonjour is Apple-centric, so you may need to add support to the clients, if you wish to go down that route. (I thought Bonjour was just a 'discovery/announcement' service - but I am definitely not Apple-centric :wink:)

Ahh... understood, so the printer is sort of invisible until I go to the 2860

I'm deffo not apple centric either - I will have more fiddling...

Again thanks for all the help

C

And the first thing I did was print out the pages on setting up a USB printer...

Thanks all - I've been 'doing' computers for 44 odd years (started on mainframes) and they just don't get any easier... or I've always been this dumb

Thanks again

Chris