How to share a wireless printer via a router (no Internet connection wanted)

[jimmc]

I have 2 boys (twins) rooming together in a dorm at a local college. The college has a very high speed internet connection which they happily access via ethernet. They also have a wireless laser printer that I would like to configure so that they can both access it from their respective laptops while in their dorm room. A tech from the university advised me that I could use my own router for such a purpose. I want to avoid interfering with the university's own wireless networks as well, and there appear to be 3 of those.

I have an extra LinkSys WRT54G to use. Again, I'm only interested in the 2 boys having wireless access to this one device and absolutely nothing else. Not a net guy so any advice would be greatly appreciated. I did plug an ethernet cable into one of the 4 non-Wan ports on the router from my laptop as a start and found that I can log in to the router's admin screens via 192.168.1.1 and admin/admin. What's next is beyond me. Thanks!

Jim

 

[Suztera]

You just need to either have an ethernet cable (If the printer support this) connected from the printer to the router or have the printer wirelessly connected to the router. Any devices connected to the LinkSys WRT54G will have access to the printer. You can use all the functionality of the printer except anything that requires internet access if you don't want the router to give you internet access. If it has scan functionality, you can scan to a pc/laptop. It doesn't matter if you don't have internet, as long you and the printer are on the same network, you can use it.

 

[jimmc]

Thank you for your response. So right now, as mentioned, they use a fast Ethernet university Internet connection. There are also 2 or 3 available wireless networks that are listed if they click on the wireless network symbol in their app tray. If I go in and plug in the LinkSys router, they will see this as another wireless network choice? And since the default gateway for this router is 192.168.0.0, they'd get a 192.168.0.x IP i...and so will the wireless printer?

 

[Suztera]

Thank you for your response. So right now, as mentioned, they use a fast Ethernet university Internet connection. There are also 2 or 3 available wireless networks that are listed if they click on the wireless network symbol in their app tray. If I go in and plug in the LinkSys router, they will see this as another wireless network choice? And since the default gateway for this router is 192.168.0.0, they'd get a 192.168.0.x IP i...and so will the wireless printer?

Yes. It will be a separate wireless network. You could rename the name of the SSID to the printer if you want to make it more obvious.

 

[jimmc]

[/quotemsg]

Yes. It will be a separate wireless network. You could rename the name of the SSID to the printer if you want to make it more obvious. [/quotemsg]

Thank you for your help!