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D-Link DP-311U Wireless 802.11b USB Print Server

D-Link DP-311U Wireless 802.11b USB Print Server

List Price:
Your Price: $98.99
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Not plug-and-play, but works
Review: It took me (a computer engineer) a couple hours to figure out how to get this working. After trying DHCP (since the default IP address for the router isn't compatible with my cable modem's private sub-net) I couldn't talk to it at all through ethernet and had to by trial and error, figure out how to hard-reset it (power cycle while holding the reset button depressed). Then I could talk to it again, and just set its default IP address to one on my network (192.168.1.1). It's now been working great for weeks although I occasionally (3-5 days) need to power cycle it for some reason.
I was also irritated that they didn't include a bit of ethernet patch cable for the initial setup in the package ...
Never-the-less, a very useful product, just needs some work on automatic configuration.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Poor documentation!
Review: My DLink router and WiFi PC card, installed over a year ago, worked fine, with no installation troubles. Since then, I installed an Ethernet bridge for my PS2 and now, wanted to add the USB print server. Similar to D-Link's bridge, documentation is incomplete. I made the mistake of jumping ahead and mistakingly plugged in the power to the DP-311U before turning the printer on. Now, I have to get an RMA, send it to DLink, and wait for them to reset it, as there is no at-home reset option. DLink has an advantage with this product as there are no similar products from the major router manufacturers. Unfortunately, this translates to an expensive product with poor documentation and technical support (who could not answer if the product is compatible with my Epson product).

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Easy Setup and Great Documentation
Review: My entire wireless network is composed of Linksys products, so naturally when I wanted to get a wirless print server I looked to Linksys. I went out and bought the linksys WPS11. It is a parallel port wireless print server. Got it up and running ok, but printing was really slow. Sometimes 1-2 minutes between pages on text documents. So then I went out and bought the PPS1UW print server. This is Linksys' USB version. Couldn't even get this thing going at all with my printer, which I thought was odd since my printer worked fine with the WPS11 and they have you install the same print server drivers.

After spending about 3 days troubleshooting, I went back to the store and found the DLink DP-311U. Got it home, plugged it in and had it talking to my Linksys WRT54G wireless router with 128 Bit WEP encryption in no time. This print server processes my print jobs at the same speed as when I had the printer plugged in directly to the pc. I was also impressed with the detail of documentation as opposed to the documentation of some other linksys products I had bought.

I definetly recommend this product if you are looking for a way to place your printer at a distance from your computer. Great Product.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: a very good print server
Review: My home networking is pure D-Link, router, adpaters, print servers, and even my USB bluetooth adapter. I already have a DP311U connected to a laser. 2 months ago, I bought another DP311U for an inkjet printer. I got the problem on how to differenciate the 2 same print servers. After some research, it just requires you to set the 2nd server to a different address. The original is 192.168.0.10. You then set the 2nd (or the 1st) to a differnt one, like 192.168.0.20 and everything will be just fine.

Seemed D-Link is dumping DP311U now because they have a 802.11g server (DP-G310) and sometimes you could find a < $60 DP311U. But believe me, you won't need a 11g for print server. 11b is fast enough. If you think printing is too slow, it's the problem of printer, not the PS.

D-Link's quality is good. My router (DI-624) never died for the past 1.5 years. I would recommend their products.


Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great, once you get it working!
Review: My network is two wireless XP laptops and a Linksys 802.11b router so I was a little worried about mixing networking brands - but it worked out fine. Virtually no slowdown compared to having the printer directly connected to the laptop and I print some pretty big files. Setup wasn't too bad (~15-20 min staring at the manual really confused, 5 min reading amazon.com reviews, ~20-30 min installation). Much like what Hafizullah said, it's better to config in steps: configure the printer in the wired configuration and then get it to work wirelessly. Since the manual is mostly useless, here's what I did:

1. Wire it up (connect the print server to the router with an ethernet cable and the printer to the print server by USB).
2. Turn on printer, power on the print server (after startup sequence of ~20 sec, ethernet light should be lit).
3. At this point open up a browser and go to "192.168.0.10" and the print server config utility should start.
4. Click on the "configuration" tab and set: password, connection mode (mine is infrastructure), ESS-ID (your network's name), wireless channel, WEP (# bits and password). It's important to type the WEP key in exactly with no spaces or dashes because the utility won't give any error message if the password is wrong. Click 'save'.
5. Click on the "Network" tab and change the IP address if you want. It has to be within the range of assignable IP addresses for your wireless network (e.g. my router assigns from 192.169.1.1 to 192.169.1.101, so I set the print server to 192.169.1.2). Make sure to set "manually assign" otherwise you won't know what address your printer is on! I think the workgroup has to be set, but I'm not sure (I set it to the name of the wireless network).. Click 'save'.
6. At this point you should be able to print a test page. Click on the "tools" tab and click to print a test page. If it prints, you're in business.
7. Now you can set up the printer drivers. The instructions are actually pretty good for this, so use them here. Once that's done, try printing something that isn't a test page to make sure the printer itself is set up OK.
8. Now to configure the wireless portion. Unplug the ethernet cable, and click the reset button (recessed in the back of the print server). Once it finishes booting, the "wireless" light should be on or blinking. If so then you should be done. Try printing something.. I didn't have everything correctly set up initially, so this step took a few minutes. I think everything necessary to set was covered in #4.

Good Luck!


Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Set it up once and then forget about it!
Review: OK, first of all, the documentation for this product is really poor. If you were to follow the instructions step-by-step I'm pretty sure you would never get it working properly since they leave a lot of stuff out. However, if you are somewhat techwise (were you able to install the wireless network by yourself?) you should be able to get it running. Once you get it going though you never have to touch it again.

I've got 2 laptops (one Win XP and one Win 2000) connected to a Netgear wireless network that can now print to our new Epson Stylus C84 printer. The performance is great and its a convenience to be able to place your printer anywhere you want and not have to attach it to a computer. I was able to get it to use 128 bit WEP and MAC authentication on our network.

Pros:
good performance
convenience
configurable web interface

Cons:
horrible documenation
Only USB 1.x support (would have liked to have seen USB 2.0 support)

All in all, though, I am very pleased with this product. If you have an all wireless network with only laptops this is a great product to consider.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: sucks!!!
Review: Stay away from DLINK if you expect ease of use or have mixed operating systems (XP and MAC)!!!


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