A long time ago, in a household far far away, I attempted to make Brandy’s computing life easier by setting her up with a wireless laptop and installing a Netgear wireless print server.

This ended up not working well because the wireless print server was a bit of a turd and supported only the bare minimum print functions of our Epson CX3810 multi-function printer.  The ink status was inaccessible as were the scanning functions.  And then we had a dog chew through the power supply cord, killing the print server.

Fast forward a year and a half… Brandy now has a new wireless laptop that she uses every night to print stuff for school.  The old print server still has no power and was practically useless even when it did work, so the printer is now shared from my primary PC.  This requires booting up the PC each time she wants to print.  While this works, she still has no access to printer status and is unable to scan anything.  What to do?

BUY MORE STUFF!  After doing some research, I came across the IOGEAR USB Net ShareStation which allows you to share up to four USB devices via ethernet.  It’s an amazingly small device (2″ square) that has an RJ-45 jack on one side and a USB port on the other.  Plug it in, boot it up, connect your device, and install the software.  That’s about it.

There’s a web interface on the ShareStation that allows you to manage the connected devices, update firmware, et cetera, but there’s not much reason to be in there as connections between client machines and the ShareStation are initiated from software installed at the clients.

Speaking of clients, there is one downside to going this route: only one client at a time can be connected to a particular device.  That is, if Brandy is connected to the printer, she has it locked for her use.  If I want to use the printer at the same time, I’m out of luck (though I can send her a message through the ShareStation requesting that she disconnect).  This would be painful in a frat house, but works well enough when only two people are computing.

The upside is that all functions of the printer work through this device.  Printing, scanning, status, and maintenance all work flawlessly over the network.  This is a huge improvement over the Netgear server.

Ironically, I’m using the Netgear server now (purchased a 3rd party power supply) to connect both my primary PC and the ShareStation to the LAN.  We just moved my computer out to the living room into a corner with no RJ-45 jacks, but the Netgear server also acts as a wireless bridge with its 4 port switch.  It has the distinct pleasure of having to shuttle data to and from the ShareStation.  I hope it’s not jealous.

I realize there’s nothing sexy about printing over a network, but I’m really impressed with how well the ShareStation works.  Figured somebody out there might benefit from the info.