Customer Reviews

NETGEAR WGPS606 54 Mbps Wireless Print Server with 4-port Switch

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(26)

 

 

I have a wirelss network w/3 pc's, one Mac Powerbook, w/netgear router, and now the WGPS606 netgear printserver (my motorola WPS870G was half the $$$ and easier to set up on my Powerbook, but got killed by lightning storm yesterday); I have an old laserjet & HP officejet d145. Contrary to rumors, you can get the WPS870G to printserve wirelessly from Mac/OSX through the network (i.e., powerbook is wireless, printserver is also wireless)

1-I set a dedicated IP address in my router to associate w/my printserver...To do this: in 192.168.0.1 (which is the router) I renewed IP addresses, looked into the router's assignment table, and figured out that the printserver was at 192.168.0.4, so I just assigned it to 192.168.0.4; to do the assignment, you also need the device (i.e., the printserver's) MAC address; that's the trick...the MAC address on the netgear printserver is called the "device" or "hardware" MAC address, and it's the number printed on the box itself; if you go to the printserver ip address (in my case, 192.168.0.4), you find netgear's set up pages for the printserver; the printserver has two mac addresses, the 2nd is called something like the `wireless' MACaddress; that wireless MAC address (which is only different by one digit at the end) is what you use when you set up a dedicated IP address for the print server; when you've done all this, you should probably go back into 192.168.0.1 (your router set up pages) try to renew ip addresses to see if the assigned printserver address (in my case, 192.168.0.4) shows up and shows up with the right MAC address
3- when setting up a new printer in printer set up utility, you select IP Printing + LPD/LPR, printer address is your new ip address that you assigned (192.168.0.4 in my case) and queue name is L1 (presumably L2 if you have a second printer)

btw, you may need to upgrade the driver (I needed an HPIJS driver for my multi-function HP d145); the original driver didn't even install from the cd

Netgear generally makes okay products. I use several of them without complaint.

I had hoped to use the WGPS606 Wireless Print Server, but it just isn't worth the effort to bothet with it. It's going back for a refund.

Before you consider purchasing one, consult the Netgear web site to see if it is compatible with your printer. The list is surprisingly short. Multi-function devices, other than the print function, are not supported. Nor at this point is Windows Vista, but that may well be rectified in time.

The installation wizard immediately warns you to shut down your firewall - and does not provide any guidance as to what port forwarding might enable thr WGPS606 to work with a firewall. That, in my opinion, is just plain dumb.

In my case, the install wizard seemed to work smoothly. I clicked on "Print Test Page" and the test document flowed to the spooler - and then nothing. Netgear's web site has little in the way of troubleshooting information. (Their quickstart guide is a total joke.)

There's a manual downloadable from the Netgear site, but it is not overly helpful.

It's just as easy in my particular situation to set up a wired print server, which is precisely what I'm going to do. Better that than beat my head against the wall with yet another inadequately supported product. As noted, Netgear makes pretty good products, but their documentation and tech support resources leave a lot to be desired. I'm just fed up with wasting my time because the manufacturer didn't care enough about their customer to fulfill what I consider to be their responsibility to the customer.

Jerry

I'm not reviewing this on the Print Server functionality, since I don't actually use it for that. As another reviewer stated in his review, this is the only reasonably priced, widely available wireless bridge I could find. I have a lot of wired network devices in one room upstairs with the router and modem in my landlord's office downstairs. Rather than buy wireless cards for all those devices or run a wire downstairs, this did the trick. I plug everything (including another switch) into this switch and I'm connected to the router downstairs.

It took some tweaking to get it working correctly. At first, it would drop connection for seemingly no reason and not pick it up again. Somehow that went away, enough resetting and tweaking and it's worked great for the last 5 months or so.

I read scary reviews about print servers and was very reluctant to buy one, however, I eventually broke down and bought the Netgear WGPS606, 54Mbps. I was shocked that it was a piece of cake to install. The wizard spoon feeds you the installation steps. 1) You make sure that the printer you want to share has a driver installed on the computer (any computer can be used to configure your computer). 2) You disconnect your computer from your router (if applicable) and connect the print server via network cable provided 3) the wizard configures the printer to the Print server. I ran into problems at this stage, however, the wizard offered three possible troubleshooting scenarios - one was related to the firewall. Surely enough, once I disabled my firewall, the wizard was able to continue with configuring the print server 4) the wizard then automatically assigned an IP and tested a print page. It worked great! Then I moved the print server to a corner in our living room (stand alone- connected to the printer only). Next I ran the wizard on each laptop to configure the connection to the print server ... it took less than 5 minutes per machine before it started printing. Again, the only problem was related to my software firewalls (Zonealarm and Norton) - Once I disable both and everything worked. Once done, I re-enabled my firewalls and everything still worked. Great product. All in all, it took less than an hour. I should have done it sooner.

I bought this server after reading the generally positive reviews not realizing that it has huge compatibility issues with a lot of printers. [...]
They have a compatibility list and an incompatibility list. My printers were on neither and after a long tech support process learned that the printers are not compatible. They must produce this list through the experiences of customers like myself. Check the list, because a lot of state-of-the-art printers are not compatible with this print server and thus do not work at all.

I'm a fairly technical person, that does computer security for a living so I tend to never use wizards or read directions (unless absolutely necessary). My primary router / gateway at home is the Linksys WRT54G - one of the best featured routers and most reliable (one of few routers with Dynamic DNS which is very helpful for accessing hosted remote services at home like FTP, Web or Email). I purchased the Netgear WGPS606 to enable wireless print capability to my Brother HL-5140 Laser Printer.

The first step I always take with most hardware is to simply upgrade the firmware. Generally, when you call any technical support line they like for you to be using the latest firmware. So, I connect to the WGPS606 using a simple straight through Ethernet cable and connect to the router. Perform a quick scan of my subnet (ping sweep type tool) and see the Netgear router. Connect to the router with User Name: Admin / Password: Password. I get into this strange looking screen that looked more like a router then a print server...wow, was I right - you see the WGPS606 is built on a platform similar to all the other Netgear operating systems, I I was connected to a portion of the router that they don't advertise. It turns out that you can NOT perform subnet scans to locate the router - you must follow their written directions verbatim. In addition, you will later see that when you set up this router properly, and look at your DHCP local table, you will see this "phantom" entry that is not the real static IP you assign to the router, but needs to be there to properly function, most people will probably not see this address but I noticed it always seems to grab a "hidden" DHCP type entry.

Anyway, the correct way that you MUST connect to this router is to assign a static IP address to your local lan NIC in the 192.168.0.xxx range (I set xxx to 15 it really doesn't matter on a one to one connection, just don't set your local static address to 102) & the subnet should be 255.255.255.0 subnet. You will then need to open a web browser (I always use firefox when possible) and type in the url: 192.168.0.102 to connect to the WGPS606 print server.

Once in configuration is rather simple...or so I thought. I had previously downloaded the latest firmware and then pointed to it and upgraded the WGPS606 to version (at the time of this review it's version V1.0_025)I am a security conscious person so I have been using WPA Key security on my home wireless network. Let's just say that WEP security is not very secure and easily defeated, although adding MAC address restrictions and a longer key length will be helpful.

Next, I configure a static IP in my private subnet and print a test page. All is well, or so I thought. I turned out that no matter what changes I attempted, even taking the recommended static IP from Netgear (which just seemed to add an IP space of 100 to the phantom DHCP IP), the connection continued to drop. I guessed the problem was with the incompatibility of the way that Netgear implements the WPA standard, or a "timing" issue on the key exchange. The main advantage of WPA Security over WEP is a key exchange on certain intervals. It seemed that everytime a new key was to be grabbed each half an hour, the WGPS606 just disappeared off my network and was never to be found again.

The only solution was to reconfigure my Linksys WRT54G router to use WEP security with MAC addresses security. As soon as I made that change the Netgear WGPS606 has been rock solid and available. I speculate that if I get a Netgear Router that the WPA security may start working again since their code is probably consistent. I know this is the problem since I was able to print until the first key exchange.

I hope this helps all you Linksys router owners or other brands. Overall, I do think this is a great product with a lot of promise. I'd like to see Netgear work out the WPA security problems. In fact, I'd like to even see them support WPA2 standard with AES or TKIP, but this probably asking a lot at this point. So, thanks to Netgear, I either have to accept lower wireless security or change out my router to another Netgear product and hope it works and / or monitor my local network or intruders. Yes, I take security very seriously.

Lastly, configuring the printer was a breeze with the supplied disk. Once again I think this should have been easier to do without the disk, but Netgear seems to think that all computer users are simpletons. Essentially, they set up a new printer port using a TCP/IP simple connection and P1 or P2 depending on the physical USB port used on the WGPS606. This is why you must assign a static IP to the print server, or use reservations in your DHCP server. I've worked with Brother printers and they have this really nice wizard that actually creates an executable file that you can give to anybody that wasn't to print on your network. I would be nice if you could just email this executable instead of having to install a CD rom every single time you want to grant someone else the ability to print on the network for the first time.

Overall, this is a good product if you are willing to live with the lower security and forced setup's with the CD Rom. I give this product a 3 until they get WPA working and a simple small setup printer executable, based on the price point there is nothing better on the market that can perform this type of functionality - yes there is a nice 4 port switch, plus the possibility for two USB printers.

This router is great... it's the only affordable wireless 802.11G printserver that I could find that supports WPA-PSK secruity!!! BUT if you are not someone that know's what security is or how to set up the wireless access point without the wizard you don't want this. After I went and got the manual from the netgears web site, and found out default ip is 192.168.0.102 ( if I remeber correctly) to set up the secruity and SSID to match my D-Link ExtremeG router it worked great... after that point the wizard worked fine to set up the printer... Also the 4 port switch is going to come in very handy until I decide to get ride of my old computer and put it's wireless PCI card into the new computer I built...

It's kind of funny how everyone makes their routers with WPA-PSK security but the only advertising that their printservers support it is netgear...

By the way my HP Deskjet printer is not on the compatiblity list and it works... The key here is to have the print driver installed on your computer. Once the info leaves your computer it's formated all the print server does is forward it to the printer it doesn't need to know anything about what kind of printer you have!!!!!!!!!!!!

We use it for a wired switch and as a USB print server. It works fine provided you don't touch anything after. Ever. It is not plug-and-play with the USB ports and won't wake up a printer to print, if powered off, unlike a direct USB connect. I was unable to configure the device at one point because I swapped USB ports. The unit had to have a hard reset (remove power) in order to be reconfigured. Same when I powered down the printer and turned printer back on again. It could not recognize it had a printer anymore. We have three users at home, so this is pretty harmless, but it isn't the plug and play you would expect for USB or network configuration. And from the reviews of the SC101 drive, it appears to be a constant theme for netgear to go proprietary on its interfaces to what you would think would be "generic" network devices. the documentation was horrible, and didn't even approach any what-ifs in the deployment of the asset. Sometimes, the engineers need to write the manuals and not create a disposable item because they are too lazy to document the product fully.

Summary - Good idea, but debugging requires patience and imagination, as the documentation is lacking in detail (or, consistent with their products). But, once stable, works fine.

4* for product 1* for support from Netgear. I use this Print Server as a client to my Linksys Wireless WRT54G router, to network to my Canon MP780(very good product as well). Router works great but documentation and tech support from Netgear sucks. It's one of the few PS that works with this printer even though it is not listed on their "official support page". However it may be difficult to get Netgear's product and your system configured due to poor documentation and support on Netgear's behalf. IF you configured your router for MAC filtering.. MAKE sure you enter both the wired and wireless MAC address for the Netgear router to your access point router. It's not documented well, but that is how you can get PC's to submit jobs wirelessly your Canon MP780 via the Netgear's Print Server. IF THIS was documented well in Netgear's documentation and if the tech support staff knew, it would have saved me a few hours and my submission for an RMA! I had to Google this issue and found some clues to figure out what could be wrong. Enjoy!

I purchased this print server to work with my Canon and HP printer. After a somewhat counter-intuitive setup, I got it to work with the Canon, but it wouldn't work with the HP Laserjet 1012--which is a very common laser printer. I tried different drivers, configurations, settings, etc. The printer would either print gibberish or fail to print altogether.

The product doesn't include software to work with Apple computers, but it would be possible to set a printer up through Windows and share it out to the macs.

I returned this and bought a Linksys printer server that worked fine with the HP printer.

Unless you are very technical and want to work through a frustrating setup, avoid this one.