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hey,

Ive been tasked to find a way of making our non wireless label printers work. The current test model uses Ethernet so i initially looked at small wireless bridges.

but there is an optional USB model.. which got me thinking.

Q.

Is there a Wireless USB dongle that will work with a large infrastructure wireless lan using radius ?

I see the problem being that they are just a radio, antenna and have the encryption & modulation chip. All the client activity i.e SSID and username / pass etc.. is done within the windows client util or 3rd part client.

of course the printer has none of this.

any device capable of doing both


cheers
:-? [/b]

Typically, a printer that has a network connection and a USB on the back is expecting Ethernet protocol into the network connection (provided via a switch or wireless bridge), and serial connectivity via the USB. Furthermore, in the USB world, a printer or other device usually has its UART configured as an endpoint, not a host, similarly any USB dongle you get will also be an end point. You cannot connect two endpoints together without a host, usually the PC.

There do exist some married pairs of Bluetooth devices that act as a ???¡é?¡é?????¡­?¡°wireless cable???¡é?¡é???????? plug the ???¡é?¡é?????¡­?¡°type A???¡é?¡é???????? end into the PC, put the ???¡é?¡é?????¡­?¡°Type B???¡é?¡é???????? end into the printer, and set the PC up as if the printer was USB cabled. This may work if what you need is to remote the printer from one PC, but will not be any good if the whole idea behind going wireless is to share the printer to multiple users, hence the married pair of BT dongles.
Most likely, what will best serve you is a wireless bridge type of device. If these label printers are stationary, there are any number of bridge adapters in existence which are programmed via some interface, (usually html) with all required SSID and security info, to connect to your wireless network. Then connect the Ethernet jack of the bridge to the Ethernet of your printer and it behaves as if cabled. The network and security settings are saved in the bridge, so programming on a PC then moving to the printer which has no interface to do the programming is painless.

If you are looking for mobility for your printers, you may want to look at the Asus-wl-330 (or newer generation is wl-330ge), this ???¡é?¡é?????¡­?¡°pocket AP???¡é?¡é???????? can work in AP mode or Bridge mode. It is about the size of a pager ???¡é?¡é????????does anyone remember those????¡é?¡é?????¡é???¡é and can be velcro???¡é?¡é?????¡é???¡éd to you device???¡é?¡é???????| Power for mobility may be another issue, when used as a bridge, this device is connected to the PC with a very short Ethernet cable (3 or 4 inch) for data transport, and with an equally short USB cable for power only. In your situation, you may have to provide alternate power as your printers ???¡é?¡é?????¡­?¡°Type B???¡é?¡é???????? connection and endpoint configured UART are not going to be providing the 5v a USB host does.

Lastly, ensure that whatever bridge you get has appropriate security capabilities, I just double checked the specs on the wl330, and it claims to do WPA-PSK, its processor is likely too under powered to do any more. The wl-330ge seems to have all the bells and whistles, capable of wpa2-PSK, wpa2-Enterprise with 802.1x???¡é?¡é???????| and of course anything lower.

thesprocket thanks for the reply m8 :D


as i expected it would be a wireless bridge and i don't really fancy changing (or using) 80 PSK`s every 6 months on the bridges.

furthermore i would need power to these devices which is not really what has been specified on the mobile carts.

Thanks for your detailed reply, it will come in very useful in future. you wouldn't believe how quick people will accept something read online vs an actual engineers opinion.


once again thanks

8)

There are ways to do this, but would probably be cheaper to buy a new printer.

1. There are Wireless Print Servers that support WPA2
2. There are Client Bridges that also support up to WPA2, such as the HP M111 for an example.

~K