It should work easily Hilary, the print server ('the internet switch') will ask whatever is allocating addresses on your network (probably your router) for IP addresses. On each PC you will need to install each network printer (install printer will show an option to look on the network) and if any drivers are needed they will be loaded automatically.

Seymore. thanks for the help with keyboard, much apreciated.
Great thtread this.
poldark

Poldark,

Do you live in Cornwall or are you a dark haired man from Poland, LOL

Thanks, K. We're just waiting for a new printer table to arrive and then we're going to give it a go.

"...new printer table"

Oooooh!

:-)

Brianboru, Spaceman

Many thanks for the suggestions of what I should do to encrypt the network. Unfortunately, I'm not sure I have grasped the "how to" as opposed to the "what to" do :)

My router is a Netgear DG834GT.

Ta.

Bones:

Can you login to your router?

Browse to http://192.168.0.1

Default username/password is admin/admin

If you get past that, the rest is pretty straightforward, just browse the items on the left window of the screen. Help appears for each in the right window.

It is advisable to restrict wireless access to your router by both hardware address of your wirless laptop (MAC address) and encryption (using a secret key to encrypt data transmitted wirelessly).

Netgear routers make the hardware address restriction easy, by showing you which devices are connected and then allowing you to switch on restriction for those devices only.

Wondered if anyone can help,which key do you press when restarting PC to go into safe mode. Need to do some housekeeping.

F8

Thanks MM. That makes sorting out the other suggestions a lot easier. The one thing I'm unsure of now is how to find out the MAC addresses of my machines. No doubt there's a simple way but please enlighten me. Searches in Windows throw up horrible things like DOS commands which I won't touch :)

The network devices usually have the MAC addresses on a sticker at the back or underneath, otherwise you usually have to run a DOS command Windows key+R then 'cmd' to open a DOS window.

Thanks Haystack

The table's arrived and it's pink, Doc. It's the new black.

:o)

Anyway, we're struggling with the set up and can't get the first network printer that we've tried to work. We've assigned it a manual IP address (the next number on from the PC's already on the network) and have assigned the correct IP address for the router on the printer menu screen, but when we try to "Add printer" it just isn't being detected.

The relevant light is flashing on the ethernet switch which implies that the network card and cabling is OK.

Presumably we should also be able to see the device in the router homepage????? Because we can't!

Not sure what to try next.

Hil, it sometimes takes a few minutes for devices to appear. Otherwise try adding it by name rather than searching for it. Unsure whether your switch has a device name but try things like

\\IP address\printername
\\devicename\printername

e.g. \\192.168.2.23\printer1
or \\switch\printer1

Presumably when you set up the switch you gave the printer a name.

Don't use the internet/intranet option since that is different.

BTW how are you setting the IP address for the switch?? You would need to talk to the switch via the browser I would think, which you can't do if you haven't given it an IP address yet! I would think it asks the network to allocate it an address.

Off for the day but someone else will help no doubt.

K,

Thanks. I've done nothing about setting an IP address for the switch and the switch doesn't show on the list of attached devices on the router homepage.

I'm confidant(???) that it's working, however, as I've taken 2 PC's off the gateway and put them onto the switch and have plugged the printer directly into the gateway.

I've not given the printer a name. How do I do that or find it's name? The documentation doesn't say anything about naming it.

Ok I think I may have misunderstood things slightly. Could you confirm that the printers are internet ready, i.e. have an internet socket and a built-in print server? In which case you will be setting the IP address and printer name directly on the printer whether via a control panel or a browser or telnet program. Ideally though the printer would use DHCP to get an IP address from the main router rather than you selecting it, but a printer name still has to be set up on it.

I suspect that apart from that your problem might be that the new switch is also acting as DHCP server, i.e. you have two networks rather than one. If that is true you need to disable the DHCP server on the new switch. What model switch have you got? How have you configured it?

i

Bones:

Don't bother with all that stuff. Login to your router, with the wireless laptop turned on and connected to the network.

Click on "Wireless Settings"

Third down in the middle window you will see

Wireless Station Access List [Setup Access List]

Click [Setup Access List]

You will see a table of the MAC addresses of Available connected devices, one of which will be your laptop (hopefully, the only one). At the top of the page, check the box marked "Turn Access Control On".

Then click "Add" for each device you wish to allow to access your router. You can even pick your own Device names for them.

Once you've done this, we can worry about encryption. Access restriction is the important bit, IMHO.

K,

The gateway/router is a Netgear DG814 and the switch is a FS605. The printer is a Minolta colour laser with built in print server and RJ45 socket.

When the switch was connected to the router there was nothing to see or do - it just worked straight away. We're sure that it is working as 2 of the PC's are wired into it and they both work fine. Also the printer is wired straight into the gateway.

The router homepage is xxx.xxx.0.1

The 4 PC's have been automatically assigned as

xxx.xxx.0.2
xxx.xxx.0.3
xxx.xxx.0.5
and
xxx.xxx.0.6

Nothing else is being detected on the router homepage.

I don't know why nothing seems to be assigned to xxx.xxx.0.4 and wondered if this might be assigned either to the switch or the printer.

Using the menu on the printer, the IP address xxx.xxx.0.7 has been assigned to the printer. There isn't an option (that I can see) to assign a name to the printer although it does have something called a HW Address which consists of alphanumeric characters.

We've tried searching for the printer on the network using the HW Address as a name but to no avail.

The printer does have a homepage but it needs to be connected to access it.

I guess that one option would be to connect via the parallel port to access it.

Can't think of anything else to try.

MM - thank you. There was just the one device detected and that is now a trusted source with Access Control switched on.