Belkin Wireless USB Print Server

A print server comes in handy if you want to share a printer over the network and manage the prints taken from it. This device from Belkin can act as a print server for either the wired or wireless users. This means it can't be used for both simultaneously. On the wireless front, it supports IEEE 802.11g, while it has a 10/100 Mbps LAN port to connect it to a wired network. The print server is fairly compact and easy to set up. It has LEDs on the front panel to indicate power, printing status and wireless connection. The server has two USB ports for connecting two printers and comes with a Web-based management interface, making it very easy to configure. The print server offers 64/128-bit WEP, but not support other encryption systems such as WPA that are more secure. There is also a port monitor utility, which is helpful for selecting the appropriate print server when more than one of them is installed on your network. One place where this print server was found lagging was that there is no way by which you can restrict control to the server, or know as to who on the network has been printing. To test the print server's speed, we fired a 16 MB grayscale image print. We connected the print server to a Canon MF-3110 printer. The total time from the beginning of transfer to the print completion was just 18 secs, which is pretty good. Simple documents began printing in no time at all.

The Bottom Line: Except for the provision to connect two printers at a time, it is a very basic print server.

Rupin Vij