Customer Reviews

Cisco-Linksys EFSP42 EtherFast 10/100 2-Port Switched PrintServer

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

Originally, I rated this product with 4 stars. I have downgraded it for the following two reasons:

First, some background. My in-home network has about 5 Linksys products. Their 4 port cable/dsl router which does a good job. In two years, I've upgraded the firmware twice which involves a reboot of the box. Other than those two times, I've only had to recycle power to the box once to clear a problem. I have the Wireless access point and associated PC Card for my laptop. There's also a 5 port hub and the two port print server. So overall, I like Linksys. However, here are the reasons for the downgrades.

1) with the Printserver active, I occasionally get IP address conflict warnings from Windows TCP/IP drivers. I have to cycle power to the PrintServer to clear the problem. This did not happen until the PrintServer was added to the network. My cable modem router is the DHCP server on the network and that functionality is disabled in the printserver and the WAP11, so either Linksys has a problem in their DHCP server in the router or the problem lies with the Printserver. This is not a show stopping issue, it just causes inconveniences until it's cleared.

2) The printserver (two printer model), only has 128kb of RAM. That's not enough. With RAM prices as low as they are, the box should have 32MB or more. I have an Epson 900 color stylus printer and an NEC 1200 laser printer controlled by the print server. The laser printer has no problem printing, but when I send a color job to the Epson, it takes FOREVER. The Epson printed faster when I had it on our server and shared the device. That just slowed the server down when someone else on the network printed to it. Our server is also a work-station (yes, I'm peer-to-peer). Each printer should have 16MB of buffer ram to speed print jobs, especially to an ink-type printer.

I'd like to start off by stating that overall I use and like many of the linksys products, including the routers, wirless products and network adaptors. I also work with computers for a living, so I tend to be able to resolve most technical problems on my own accord. This product attempts to fill an industry niche of allowing any parellel printer to be network ready. It does this in two ways, a browsable print server or a locally configured port.

I was running this product without a problem for a while, although it frequently would get confused and drop the connection and require rebooting. I have it attached to an HP Laserjet 5P which is a very reliable and stable printer. I noticed that if I ran the product in a mixed type mode using some of the browser print servers and some port based configurations, it would crash and just stop working and require a reset. When I changed everything to the same configuration it worked better.

When I tried to configure and work with the print server from my Windows XP Home edition laptop things got very messy. I was able to figure out that the Windows XP built in firewall was blocking any use of the EFSP42 Linksys print server. To confirm my findings I did extensive testing and actually read the firewall logs. Apparently, this server was accessed on the normal port 80, but responds on port 3079. To solve this problem I had to turn off the build in XP firewall. I don't blame this on Microsoft, it was just functioning as a stateful inspection firewall should, however; linksys developed this product long before XP was on the market and has not put out updated firmware to deal with this situation.

I called Linksys and spoke with someone in the tech support, their response was we don't ever recommend using any personel firewalls. Perhaps microsoft and some of the other personal firewall manufactures should be aware of the fact that linksys is telling people not to use their products. The fix is relatively simple for Linksys, simply don't randomly change the inbound port (it should be the same as the outbound), but the technical support person couldn't understand the nature of the problem.

If you can affort to purchase a dedicated network printer, or a print server from the printer manufactures this is a far better long-term solution. You can also use any computer on your home network and set up print sharing and essentially create your own print server.

I tried to upgrade the firmware from the website using the bi-admin, but the version on the website could not recognize me device, so the techntion had to email me a 4 MB file not available to the general public. This updated utility was able to recognize the device, but then when I went to flash the firmware, I recieved a "H/W Mismatch Error". So, now I've send another email to Linksys to try and get the proper "bin" file which apparently is not on their website either. For some reason this product will NOT allow you to update the firmware from the web administrative pannel and requires the bi-admin utility (seems like a very inconsistent solution compared to their other product lines).

My guess is that this product was produced very quickly to fulfil a small market niche and not much R&D or quality went into the design. They haven't undated the firmware in over two years, which apparently has caused many problems. I gave it two stars because the 4 port switch worked, although a "C" note for a 4 port switch seems like a lot. Good luck to anyone who purchases this product, you will need it!

This product is an excellent value. The print sever works well with my RedHat Linux, and Windows 9X/NT systems. Get Windows 2000 drivers from Linksys. I had just wanted a 10/100 switch, but why not get the printer server and switch for one low price. I would recommend using the print server in lpd mode for Windows NT/2000. On Linux/UNIX just treat is like a server running lpd. Note that you will need Windows to initially configure the product and to set an IP address for the print server. The two parallel ports are logically mapped to lpd printer queues called lp1 and lp2. There is a special driver that must be loaded for printing from Windows 9X clients. I do not have an Apple system, but it can also emulate an Apple print server and there is unsupported Apple configuration software is included on the CD-ROM.

Installed and configured this in a few minutes with no problems. It is a two port print server and 4 port 10/100 switch built into one unit for a great price. The extra switch ports are great - these are convienient for hooking up additional machines to the network at my printer's location. The performance is good and the price can't be beat - what else can I say?

Despite review comments I read before I bought product about
difficulty with installation and functionality, I successfully
installed this new product from Linksys using their documentation
with NO PROBLEMS. I replaced my hub and always on desktop PC
that served as home network print server with this product and
my print performance shot up, so did my LAN performance due
to obvious architecture advantages of switch vs hub. I installed
the Linksys software on both Win98 AND Windows 2000. Note Windows
2000 software was NOT on CD, but easily downloaded from Linksys
Website and simply ran the "Setup" wizard. Print Server has
printed both documents, web pages, and photo applications as
well as my home network components can expect. Definitly everything is 3/4 times faster than when I had hub/PC arrangement. And now I get to turn the old desktop PC off, and
use my newer wireless laptops around the house, or other
wired connections at docking stations. I should also note

due to switch functionality, even my DSL internet connection
through the gateway seems faster, due to less lan CSMD contention, especially with overhead of wireless access point
and trying to use other wired connections on
my LAN. Works great.

The trick with W2K is to NOT use the bi-direction utility. Get the W2k driver from the mfr website and install that. Ignore the manual's statements obut IPX/SPX, it works fine on only TCP/IP. After setting the devices IP address with the TCPIP utility, add your 'local' printer and select the port that that you set up. The documentation was terrible, but the unit functions very well.

I read all the reviews so I was expecting some extra work to get this print server working with XP. The trick is using a static IP address, not DHCP. Go ahead and install the "BI Admin" utility because it allows you to configure the print server via a browser page, but use a static IP address. And just enter that same static IP when you configure your printer port (printer properties, add TCP/IP port). Linksys tech support can help - although this is yet another company that has outsourced tech support to the Phillipines and India. That's a big check mark against them in my book.

I have an HP LaserJet 6P which I share on my home LAN.
I started with the HP JetDirect... had problems with it not always appearing in NetBeui browse.
I dumped that and got Intel PrintStations. Those worked well with Win98 and WinMe, but then showed Netbeui browse problems under WinXP.
So I tried the Linksys Print Server. I will echo many other complaints... it's not up to the quality of other Linksys products. I could not get it to install properly using the Quick Setup instructions (device name would not show up under Browse!).
I read the manual cover to cover, and decided to fix the IP address using the Bi-Admin utility.
STILL had problems getting the print server to show up under their default PrintServer driver.
THEN I uninstalled that driver and tried to do everything using the IPP (Internet Print Protocol) instead.
SUCCESS! I installed the IPP driver on all my client PC's, and it's been working wonderfully since then.
It shouldn't have been this hard to get it working, but it finally solves my problem and works better than the HP and Intel print servers I tried earlier.

We use linksys as standard in my company for wireless activities, we found normal to stack a print server from linksys on top of wireless AP.

Out of the fact the techs took one hour to find out how to configure it through fixed IP an installing bi admin a described in other critics, which does not make it user friendly but we can cope with that as IT professional.

However, bi directional is a joke. No printer is recognized and we lost all fax and scanner functions on a Brother MFC, this IS a problem (guess why we bought a Multi Function Center?)

We had to return this material to linksys...

I've had this print server for almost 2 years. I have a reasonably-sized home network with other Linksys products that have worked flawlessly. I guess the bottom line comment I would make about this product is that, when it works it is fantastic, but when it doesn't it drives me crazy!

In my case it will work fine for a while, and then require either soft or hard resets (with the button on the back). The DHCP never worked consistently for me. I was advised by Linksys not to use it at all. I have already had to replace my original unit because it failed, and my second unit just went on the fritz as well. I was on the line with Linksys support for an hour and we couldn't get it to work, so they're sending me yet another one. I just replaced my old HP 4ML that was on the server, and decided NOT to rely on the print server anymore - I paid extra for a built-in 10/100 card. However, I still have a Canon inkjet on the print server. I still don't understand in this day why built-in ethernet is so expensive to add to a printer - it should now be standard on all but the lowest price printers IMHO.

I gave this 3 stars, but it's really probably more like 2.5 (only redeemed by the built-in 4 port switch). I agree with another poster who said Linksys needs to update the firmware for this product - it is not up their usual standards.

Allen