Customer Reviews

IOGEAR USB 2.0 Print Server, 1-Port GPSU21 (Silver)

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(41)

 

 

I made the mistake of taking the product description at face value. It does not work with all printers, so check the compatibility list from Iogear's website first! http://iogear.com/files/pdf/GPSU21_Printer_Compatibility_list.pdf

You may notice that the list has not been updated since 2007... so that tells you something. I have a HP Deskjet D4160 which a bought a few years ago (probably right after this list was created!)

I was able to install the print server without any complication. I could ping it, I could log into the configuration page, but whenever I tried to print, the print queue would say "Printing" but nothing would ever print. After trying the IPP method and using a static IP, still no joy. Come to find out the compatibility list does not include any of the Deskjet D series and is two years old. Cutting my losses and not wasting another minute on it, I packed it up and sent it back to Amazon. My guess is that if I had a compatible printer it would work..but I'm not about to buy another printer in order to test that theory.

The print server hardware worked fine, but the setup software
caused a few problems as a result of oversimplication.

I was able to get the server going with a Brother HL-5150D USB
printer on a home network with 4 computers (3 wireless, 1
ethernet), an all-in-one networked device and the USB
printer itself. This is using a mixture of computers with
different flavours of Windows XP. The print server is wired to
a router using DHCP. I did not chose to put the print server on
a static address (as the manual prefers) since that does not
reflect my network setup (home networks are usually DHCP).

I encountered problems because:

(a) My software firewall first caused the installer to crash.
I wanted to avoid turning it off entirely, but
to no avail. I was able to leave my router's hardware
firewall on but had to turn off my software firewall
for the installation. The manual asks that firewall
be turned off at installation, but I find that drastic.
I guess I should have cut off my internet connection when
I did this.

(b) I installed my printer drivers and print server back-to-back
without rebooting the computer in between. The manual
allows for this but I was not able to avoid the "the
segment of the print server is different from your
computer" error no matter what I tried. So I rebooted
and started the print server install a second time over.
Worked fine. The manual's guidance for this error was
incorrect in my case.

So, if what I've learned applies:
(i) install the printer driver as a normal USB
printer on your computers first.
(ii) reboot the computers
(iii) install the print server software.

Did this for all computers on the network, and
now I can print from anywhere (note that I did not
reconfigure the print server hardware each time, only
on the 1st computer, but I don't see the harm if one
does it for each computer as long as one is consistent
in placing the same settings each time).

(c) The installation of the print server software caused
my printer settings to go from "Use Printer Online"
to "Use Printer Offline". My printer swallowed all
my jobs because of that and no pages were coming out.
To remediate this go to the "Control Panel", "Printers",
"Viewed my installed printers",
right click the printer and select "Use Printer Online".
Did this for all computers.

Everything worked after that, with all firewalls reenabled.

Some day in the future, the network will go down
(power outage or other), and DHCP router might
assign a different dynamic IP address for the print server.
If that is the case, I'll have to point my computers to the
new IP address. To findout what your computer thinks the
printer address is: "Control Panel", "Printers",
"View installed printers", right click the printer and
select "Properties". Select the "Ports" tab,
then "Configure Port". Then compare the IP against the
new address your router gave to the print server
(go to your router's web page to find out). If they don't
match then you'll need to reconfigure. That said, I tested
a new IP address on the print server by power cycling it.
I then rebooted the computers and found that the new print
server address had been matched automatically on my
PCs. So things can fix themselves even if the network goes
down (the name of the port was still had the old address,
but the actual address it used was the new one...)

I've not tried this with IPP printing (remote location
printing, not did I test it under Linux or Mac).
The print server's web access is rather primitive.
But it has all I need. I intend to use this with Linux too.

The device worked as advertised and I am satisfied with it.

I bought this to connect my Canon MP760 to my two notebook computers, one running XP and the other Vista. After connecting the device to my printer and my router, I started the install CD on my XP notebook and ran the wizard, accepting all the standard options. The software finished and reported a success, but I couldn't print anything. Then I noticed (after being clued in by reading someone else's review) that the printer needs to be set to Online in the printers control panel. After doing this my XP notebook could print.

However it wasn't so easy on the Vista notebook. Although the CD software seemed to run fine (after giving it permission), no amount of tweaking got anything to print. Items would sit in the print queue forever, and zero bytes would by shown sent to the printer. It should be noted that IOGear nowhere says this software is compatible with Vista, I can confirm it is not, and I couldn't find any Vista driver on the IOGear website.

Now the good news. I discovered there is a much simpler way to install this device. Just use the instructions for IPP that are given at the back of the manual. These instructions are given for setting up to print over the internet, but the same technique can be used to set up on a local home network. With a home network it all boils down to: tell Windows you are installing a network printer and type in the URL as http://192.168.0.90:631/lp1, (your IP address will be different) then select the print driver and you are done. What it so hard about that? Nothing. And this method DOES work for both Windows XP and Windows Vista.

So it took me about 2 hours of trial and error, but now it works great. The device can be managed and configured using a web browser, just by typing in its IP address. The CD-ROM software that comes with it is not needed at all. The only thing the CD sw may help with is discovering the IP address the device is using, but that could also be done by viewing your router's status. I should mention since my router uses DHCP and serves addresses in the range 100..199 I decided to configure the print server with a fixed address of 90. Using a fixed address is the logical thing to do in this setup, because you don't want DHCP to ever change it. Again that can be configured using the device's web setup page.

After all is said and done, I sort of expect hiccups when installing a product like this, and I am judging mainly based on the final outcome: this is a great little product for a great price. I'm very happy with it.

The device is very useful if you want to convert a printer to a networked printer spending under $40. The software worked in my case, but I was trying to find a way of installing it without the software, so as to simplify things for other persons on the network. Here is how I did it, for a Brother MFC-8440, after many trials. You need first to find out the network address of the print server, and if needed, to enter the print server setup using your internet browser and set a fixed IP for the device (I set it to 192.168.3.90, since my router distributes ports from 100 onwards).


PROCEDURE
1. [Disable your firewall... I didn't really to do this on my system, but if the procedure doesn't work, try disabling it and going through the procedure again].
2. Click on Start button in bottom left corner of the screen
3. Select "devices and printers" from the column on the right side of the Start menu.
4. From the window that appears, on the top menu, choose "Add a printer"
5. Choose "Add a Network, wireless or Bluetooth printer"
6. From the bottom, choose "The printer that I want isn't listed"
7. Choose: "Add a printer using a TCP/IP address or hostname", and click NEXT
8. Change the Device type to "TCP/IP" from the drop-down list.
9. Insert next to "Hostname or IP address" the following, excluding the inverted commas: "192.168.3.90". Make sure you type it correctly; in fact, it is easier to cut it and paste it from here to the window. There are only numbers and dots.
10. Press NEXT.
11. Make sure that the Device Type is "Standard" and "Generic Network Card", and press NEXT
12. Look up Brother MFC-8440 USB (substitute for you printer) from the list (choose Brother on the left, then the model on the right...). If you do not find it, Click "Windows Update" and wait (it may take some minutes). When the window refreshes, try to find it again and highlight it in the list by clicking on the model.
13. From the next screen, you may choose "replace the current driver", if you have a version of the driver installed , and press NEXT (it is possible that you do not get this screen, if so, go to 14).
14. Give it a name (if you do not like the default "Brother MFC-8440 USB"), press NEXT
15. You may share the printer if you like, or not... (it doesn't matter since it is networked!); press NEXT.
16. You may set it as your default printer if you have no other printer installed which you usually want to use... (Most of us have other printers, so would rather not set it as their default printer).
17. DO NOT PRINT TEST PAGE...YET.
18. Finish the Setup.
19. Click the Start button, and choose again "Devices and Printers" from the list on the right.
20. You should find your Brother printer in the list. Right-click on the icon, and choose "printer properties"
21. Click on the "ports" tab at the top of the pop-up window.
22. Go down the list of ports, till you find one which is ticked (it should be highlighted, if not, click on it).
23. Press the button "Configure port"
24. In the "Protocol" box, choose LPR
25. In the "LPR Settings" box, next to "Queue name", type "lp1" (without the inverted commas, distinguishing the letter L from the number 1!!)
26. Click the OK button to close the window.
27. You may now click on the "General" tab of the printer window and print a test page, if you like.
28. [Restart your firewall]
Et voila!
Enjoy...

René

When my printer died recently I found myself searching for a new solution instead of just a replacement. I wanted to print from each of my computers without having to wire all of them to the usb switch that I had been using. In my environment I have XP, Vista, and Linux. The XP machine gives me the most trouble with printing since it is usually connected to work using a VPN connection. The VPN connection makes printing to a local IP address impossible since it redirects all traffic to work and will block any attempts to get to any local IP addresses.
With this print server I'm able to print to my printer by opening a port on my firewall direct to the print server. As long as my IP doesn't change on my internet connection then the printer works. I have printed pages, CDs, and photos through the IP connection without a failure. My wife loves it because she can now print from her laptop while on the couch; wireless connection on Vista.
The only problem I've had so far is after I installed the software for the print server on my XP box I had to change the setting on the printer from offline to online. The rest of the installs was done without the software for the print server so none of them needed this to be done.
This product has made my life easier. Just remeber to assign it an IP in your router that is easy to remember.

Let me preface this review by stating that I am in IT and consider myself pretty technical. That being considered I am not at all intimidated by setting up something that I have to customize out of the box. This device however is completely not worth the time that you will spend to get it working correctly! I decided to purchase this device so that I could get rid of my old desktop that's only purpose was to act as a print server. I wasn't looking to make a substantial investment so when I saw the price point on this I could not resist. I really wish I would have done a little more homework before pulling the trigger on this one as I spent upwards of 3 days off and on trying to find the right sequence of steps to actually get this bad boy working on my very simple home network. The first problem started with the fact that when I plugged the Print Server itself into my router it would not auto-assign an IP address. I did not see link lights and switched cables and ports on my router to see if I could figure out why. Finally, after getting frustrated, I went to bed and decided to pick it back up the next day. Sure enough, I look the next day and I have a link light and an IP assigned!!! Still no idea how that happened, but I will take it. After that I closely followed the directions that came with it to get the print driver installed. My advice to you: DO NOT DO THIS! I went round and round in a circle trying to find the right driver for my 2 year old printer and then getting it installed and never did find the right sequence. Luckily, out of desperation, I started reading the reviews of the product here on Amazon and found one that resolved my issue immediately.

Here is the key to getting it done properly:

1. DON'T use the CD that came with the device, simply connect the device to your network and figure out what IP is auto-assigned to it.
2. Once you determine the IP that is assigned to the device, you can connect to the management interface via its web interface at [...] (in my case -- your IP address will be different most likely)
3. Download the correct driver for your printer directly from the printer manufacturer and install it on your computer. When prompted for the location of your printer specify "Manual" and then point it to a network printer. For the network printer location specify [...] (your IP will be different)
4. It should establish the connection and successfully setup the printer connection for you.

I'm giving it 4 stars because it does the job with my brand new HP F4400. I left one star off because I had to completely ignore the user manual to make this work.
For everyone having problems here's a true solution.

DO NOT install the CD that comes with the device

Plug the IOGear Device in to your Router and power it on. Followed by powering on the printer.

Access your routers connected device list and look for the device by name or MAC address.

Write down the IP that was assigned and if your router allows, reserve the IP for its MAC.

In Windows (Of any flavor, even Windows 7) install the normal Printer Driver (Windows 7 already had my driver so I did nothing)

Now go to the ADD PRINTER Wizard

Choose "ADD A LOCAL PRINTER"

Choose "CREATE A NEW PORT" and "STANDARD TCP/IP PORT"

For Hostname or IP Address enter the assigned IP address of the IOGear device from above.

Next screen for Device type choose "Generic Network Card"

Now find your Printer Driver and follow the rest of the Wizard.

Print test page!

This product works great, but I would advise anyone who intends to install it to print from a
Mac with OS X 10.4.xx or higher to first install it on a PC on the same network. The installation CD
guides you through the PC install, and in the process you can find out the IP address of the
print server on your network. This is something the paper manual does not tell you how to do,
and unless you're an experienced network user, is difficult to find out. I placed a 5-minute call
to the IOGear help line, and this is the first thing they advised me to do. They should have simply
printed that in the paper manual, but perhaps their reasoning is that in a Mac install, you only
have Macs on your network! Otherwise, it's a great small footprint device for your home network.

I have purchased a lot of cheap worthless USB gadgets. This is by far the worst. I had been using a Netgear router/ printserver with its provided "port" software. This software worked on XP and Vista 32, but not Vista 64 (our newest PC). So, I assumed the old router was outmoded and bought this add-on printserver. The "Windows" logo on the box is not of the official Microsoft design. The software wouldn't install correctly on either Vista computer, and the menus were poorly translated. The cheap power supply seemed to heat up way too much. Then I found out how to set up my Netgear via LPR to any computer regardless of operating system. My 2004 router/ prinserver works fine on every computer in the house and I returned the piece-of-trash IOGEAR!

Followed instructions to the letter - had problems getting the 2 wireless laptops to print. Changed setup to static IP and still would not print. Configured computers manually, still nothing. Finally just purchased an HP printer with a built-in wireless card and have no more problems.