Adding a printer to OpenWrt router

I'm trying to prepare for a move to OpenWrt router and one of the devices I'll need to get set up is our WiFi printer

image

Having had a read through various Wiki articles is this the relevant one? https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/services/print_server/p910ndprinterserver

Anything to be thinking about in advance?

If the printer has built-in wifi, it most likely is up-to-date enough to provide its own print server, in which case you don't need to install any packages on openwrt. Simply setup the wifi client on the printer to connect to your wifi network.

p910nd is the hp jetdirect protocol server which is for older printers that aren't directly network capable on their own. Don't use it unless you have such a printer.

2 Likes

No! That link is for what to do when your printer does NOT have any networking capabilities (neither WiFi nor wired) and you want to make it available to network by connecting it to the router's USB port. Your printer already has WiFi and there's nothing special needed on OpenWrt side.

Depending on your actual printer wireless card and your config, having printer on the same WiFi network as faster devices (modern mobile phones and computers) can slow the WiFi for your faster devices. You may want to either dedicate a radio to those IoT/smart devices or maybe even get a dedicated dumb AP. That may be the case wherever you use OpenWrt or stock firmware.

Wasn't aware it can slow other devices! The printer is turned of 99.9% of the time so hopefully this isn't having an impact even on my default ISP config.

Depending on your actual printer wireless card and your config, having printer on the same WiFi network as faster devices (modern mobile phones and computers) can slow the WiFi for your faster devices. You may want to either dedicate a radio to those IoT/smart devices or maybe even get a dedicated dumb AP. That may be the case wherever you use OpenWrt or stock firmware.

Most printers do not have the latest and greatest wireless capabilities and fall well short of cabled NIC connections. If your printer is physically close to your router and you have large print jobs, a viable option is a 10/100 -> usb2.0 print server.

This is not an endorsement of this particular device but is provided as an example:
https://x-mediausa.com/product/x-media-1-port-fast-ethernet-10100mbps-usb-port-print-server/

I'd rather source an older router/AP for like a tenner and use that to create a dedicated SSID for slow devices in the house.

1 Like

While probably not really helpful to the question at hand, but

That's the reason why I'd always recommend printers with wired ethernet capabilities (at least in addition to wireless), as especially those wireles chipsets in printers are often known to be really picky (in varying stages of total brokeness) - as well as support for a well-known printer language (postscript, PCL, ESC/P2, etc.).

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 10 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.