| NETGEAR WGPS606 54 Mbps Wireless Print Server with 4-port Switch |
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Model: WGPS606
Brand: Netgear
Manufacturer: Netgear
Average Rating: 
(submit your review here)
Total Reviews: 78
Form factor: External
Hardware platform: PC
Data link protocol: Ethernet, Fast Ethernet, IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11g
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| Features: |
Print wirelessly and connect to more than one printer
No need to add print servers, wireless adapters, or unsightly Ethernet cables
Two USB ports and a 4-port 10/100 Ethernet Switch
Easy setup via Smart Wizard configuration assistant
Works with all standard 802.11g and 802.1b wireless routers and access points |
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| Description: |
| Would you and the other users in your network like the freedom to print wirelessly? And, to connect to more than one printer, without having to add print servers, wireless adapters, or unsightly Ethernet cables? With NETGEAR's 54 Mbps Wireless Print Server with 4-Port Switch, now you can! In seconds, you can connect two printers and four PCs to your wireless network - all with one simple device. NETGEAR's 54 Mbps Wireless Print Server has two USB ports, as well as a wireless Ethernet bridge mode with a 4-port switch. That means you can connect your computer to your high-end color printer for your business use, and send the kids' documents to your older Inkjet printer - all without wires! Best of all, more than four users can use the printer, without adding any additional wireless adapters. |
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| User Reviews (78 total): |
Page 1 2 3 4 of Total 4 Pages
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Good Product, August 16, 2008
By JR (Chicago, US)
I had hard time configuring my Lexmark E238 and Canon MP530. You could not configure this router alone unless you are an expert in this field. However, be careful the technical support is only for 90 days, and after that they charge 30 dollar per case or 1hr. Therefore, my advice is to write down the steps with the technical support person guides through so you could go to your notes for help later. This product really works for two printers. However, remember this router could only perform printing if you are having multifunction printers. What I was trying to explain is if you have fax, scanner or photocopier you could not use this features through this wireless router. You should manually plug in your computer to make use of the multifunction of your printer. Yet another thing to be careful is you need to run the printer softwares in all the computer as well as the computers need to wireless.
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Tough To Install - Runs Well, August 4, 2008
By Marty From SF (San Francisco, CA.)
When I finally purchased a laptop (Dell), I wanted to be able to use the integrated Wi-Fi anywhere in my house. This router works perfectly. From the 4 extra jacks, I was not only able to keep my landline DSL, but I added my OOMA phone service as well (you can add a printer too). The reception for my laptop is perfect, even for running videos over the Internet. I can get reception through three walls and about eighty feet. Be warned that the installation is not easy. I had to call Netgear support in India to have them walk me through the on-line setup (have you ever had support from India? They are extremely polite, but I have a tin ear for accents). It took about 90 minutes (of near hell). If I had to do it again, I could, but the first time experience is not easy. When I want security, I only use my DSL, but for basic Internet use with my laptop, I have my own direct Wi-Fi channel. Its very convenient and worth the trouble. Plus, if my desktop crashes, I will still have Internet capability.
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An Absolute Piece of Junk, July 29, 2008
By i-read (Chevy Chase, MD United States)
I should've returned this when I bought it. After 1 hour of attempting to set it up myself - and I'm no IT idiot - and then an hour on the phone with a very patient tech service rep, it finally got to working. Problem? The IP address conflicted with my already installed Netgear Wireless Router. One would think that they would have had their products compatible with each other...but such is not the case.
[For the record, in the house we have a Mac Powerbook and two XP machines. The printers are an Epson Photo R320 and an HP2015 laser.]
Upon set up, it was then realized that it was not compatible with the Epson. A minor annoyance, considering that this is my color printer and I was hoping to wirelessly connect it to my Mac.
It never fully worked with one of our XP laptops and we could never figure why. For the Mac it's only good for 50% of the time. For the other PC it's clocking in at 100%. In all ironies, it's the laptops we bought this thing for so we could print from the rest of the house.
This is half-baked product that should have never been released and I should have returned. Unfortunately, it's a non-solution to my problem that I've finally decided to abandon after months of aggravation.
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Difficult installation; great product, July 25, 2008
By Jana L. Fuelling (Katy, TX United States)
This took about three hours to install: two hours on the phone with Netgear and another hour on the phone with AT&T. We installed it through the Uverse router and it works great. Simply following the installation steps included with the print server wasn't sufficient.
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Didn't work as expected, June 12, 2008
By K. Kelly (Virginia)
Perhaps it's just me (this is the first time I've tried a wireless print server), but I didn't realize that it also serves as your wireless access point (talking to your wireless router) for your PCs. This seemed very awkward to me, and didn't work as well as I expected (another point of interference for the internet connection, and seemed to act funny when printing). It also didn't work with one of my printers, but they do warn against that and have a website to check this, so while I can't really complain about it, it does impact usability of the server.
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Mac use, May 28, 2008
By Robert V. Stamper
This print seerver will not work with a Macintosh running the Leopard operating system, although. according to Netgear it might with system 10.4. Tried for hours with no luck so returned product. Best to use Airport Express, not to mess with any other print server.
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Works with Brother MFC 8440, May 19, 2008
By Roy L. Connell (Long Beach, CA)
I bought this and had wireless print capability on 3 laptops within about 20 min. I bought it refurbished and it works fine. One of my printers, a Brother MFC-8440 isn't listed as either compatible or uncompatible on the netgear website, but i tried anyway and am glad I did. Works great, easy to setup and utilities are downloadable from netgear.com
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Terrible, May 14, 2008
By frequent amazon visitor (Connecticut)
A lot of kinks that you need to reset the router for. I need to turn this router on and off to reset it in order to fix a problem with it at least once a day. This has to be better routers out there that are not this much of a hassel.
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Horrible Product! Stay away!, April 30, 2008
By Michael Le
If you like that frustrating feeling that comes from a sporadic network connection than this is the product for you. This thing just randomly drops of the network several times a day (particularly if you're printing something over a page long). If you really want to pull out your hair, try getting it to print page 2!
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Works great as a networked print server, April 17, 2008
By D. Harris (PA United States)
I have a Brother multi-function printer directly connected to this via an Ethernet port. I have not yet tried the USB ports for printer hookup. This unit logs into a DLink N router in another room and my wireless laptops have full access to the printer including fax services.
I reserve network addresses on the DLink router after things seem to work, but this is not necessary. Remote devices often must do a DHCP IP retrieval rather than use use a fixed IP sometimes, so that the wireless routing devices know they are there; perhaps the wireless routers could be better at scanning.
This product does what I wanted it to do. I also turned on security (WPA2) without a problem.
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Trash, April 11, 2008
By Mishka (NYC, USA)
I have thrown it away, after I spent an evening trying to configure it.
I have extensive experience with networking, both, at work and at home, but this thing defeated me. The user guide is totally useless. I had to google pver and over again, to find pieces of relevant information. Like, to even be able to connect it with cable, one has to reconfigure all his network, to make sure all IPs start with 182.168.0...This box ignores DHCP -- its IP is always 192.168.0.102, no matter what. Its wireless security is broken. And, in the end, it simply does not work. What a waste of money, and more importantly, time!
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Great product!, March 28, 2008
By R. Mills (Newport, RI USA)
Very easy to set up. Integrated well with my existing newtork with a Netgear router, including security settings. Well worth the money!
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Dont wast your time or money!!!!!!, March 27, 2008
By PENCIL STOOL (North Coast USA)
What a poor product. After taking over 4 hours to get it working it performs poorly. It will print only partial pages sometimes. I thought this would be a nice item to add to my home network but I was wrong. It does not work with multi function printer. Save youself the aggrivation and return shipping cost.
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frustrating set-up, ultimately didn't work, March 25, 2008
By hulagrrl (Rocklin, Ca)
I thought this was a coll product because it supports multiple printers- that is if you can get it to work...I tried to install this with a linksys router and after 6 hour and trying EVERYTHING this piece of **** went back to the store. I completed set-up and printed a test page and then it stopped working. I followed all of the instructions, temporarily disabled my firewall, checked to make sure everything was plugged in, double and triple checked to make sure SSID and passwords and the MAC address filter was right, and it still wouldn't work. I have had similar problems with a Netgear router I had- comstant headache to get it to work just like this print server which is why i bought the linksys router...looks like i will be buying the linksys print server as well.
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Worked like a charm, March 11, 2008
By JJL (NM, USA)
I read various reviews of this before I decided to take a chance and buy it. I had little interest in the print server aspect; I was more interested in having a wireless adapter to get my xbox online since my computers and router are upstairs, but my xbox is downstairs. I originally tried the wireless adapter made by Linksys, but it was terrible. It took forever to set up, had limited configuration opens, and then lost all the settings as soon as it lost power (ever since Linksys was bought up by Cisco they've gone downhill). This seemed like a lot more bang for the buck, given the multi-functionality, and I hoped it would have more configuration options.
As with most devices of this nature, the initial setup was a little problematic. Evidently the device doesn't come with a set IP and instead is expected to retrieve one from your DHCP server. This (probably) works great if you have DHCP set up on your network, but I prefer to do everything with static IPs, so I had little success at first. Actually, even switching everything to DHCP did little to help. I had to use the utility on the CD to detect the print server and assign the initial IP (static) before I was able to actually browse to the unit's address and use its own interface to configure more advanced features such as encryption.
Once everything I got past that initial hurdle, however, everything was a snap and I'm happy as could be with it all. If you have some network savvy you shouldn't have too much of a problem setting this up for whatever you want, and I'm sure the utilities that come with it make it a breeze for the non-savvy among us (I didn't use all the utilities, so I can't verify for sure). And with 3 more ports and 2 USB slots, it makes for other network possibilities downstairs. Methinks the set-top box is coming soon...
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Does what it supposed to do., March 5, 2008
By Anton Karidian (Toronto)
4.5 stars -- Installation was smooth, and rarely gives any print errors (which is a common problem with the Linksys equivalent). 1 star deducted because it does not support wireless scanning/faxing of multi-function printers which is waht most printers are today - multifunction. 1/2 star added because it does support upto 4 printers.
Good wireless range.
Highly recommended.
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As a wireless bridge, simple and easy, February 10, 2008
By Kim A Miller (Windsor, CT United States)
I have a basement office that I connect to the family room cable modem and router through a wireless usb device. That has worked intermittently. I also have 6 computers I use for LAN parties and I have wanted to be able to have a separate cluster of machines in the basement for team oriented head to head play. Every time, I have needed to test multiple machines on new software or do upgrades, I have had to haul machines upstairs.
Enter this print server. I followed the steps I read in these reviews:
1) Turn off the router's internal firewall.
2) Make sure you pre-assign a range of IP addresses that extend into the 100s (192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.150) should do it.
3) Set the print server on a PC and turn off its firewall
3) Run the install software. It will detect the router's SSD.
4) Go back to the router and turn the firewall back on
5) Turn the firewall on the PC back on
I was able to install a second switch to my new wireless bridge (print server) and hook multiple machines to it. My connection the family room is now stable and I can give private space to a LAN team.
Works GREAT!
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Fills a unique role., February 8, 2008
By L. Hart (Virginia)
Great device, great price. There are other print servers, but not many WiFi bridges, none in this price range. The WGPS606 allowed our XBox 360 and DVR/computer to connect to our WiFi network at 1/2 the cost of just the X360 WiFi adapter alone.
Set up was simple, the only tricky bit was first having to set the IP address of the setup computer to the correct subnet manually so it would see the switch for initial setup. I was using a Mac for setup, the windows software may do this automatically.
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Great product - stupid instructions, February 6, 2008
By no pc bs (MI)
I bought one of these to use with an HP hn210e USB to ethernet adapter and a Toshiba SD-H400 TIVO DVR/DVD player that has a USB port for internet connections. This was a refurb unit (looked like new) and instructions/install program were as a download from the Netgear web site. The install routine works well except it does not tell you to disconnect the ethernet cable that is used to do the initial print server identification/IP address configuration after this is done and after the wireless network recognition is done. Result is you get an error message saying that you have two devices on your network with the same IP address: the print server on the ethernet cable and the same print server on the wireless network. This is a no no. Fix is to disconnect the ethernet cable right before attempting to communicate wirelessly with the print server. You get to guess trial/error just exactly when this should happen. Good news is that once the IP address has ben set via the ethernet line, you can disconnect and re-run part of the install routine to get the wireless going.
Netgear should have written their install program to tell the user when to remove the ethernet cable. Really stupid that they did not...and infiriating until you realize what is going one.
Other than that the install went perfectly. Hooked up the USB ethernet adapter to the Toshiba, went into the Toshiba setup to enable the network connection and all all was sweetness and light.
I will use another of the ethernet ports for my HD-DVD player and may even add a printer.
Have two of these on my network and they co-exist happily, by the way.
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Requires Some Tinkering, January 16, 2008
By Richard R. Harman (Elkridge, MD United States)
I have a multi-function printer which was hooked to one of my computers (say PC1). I shared the printer on my network which was ok when PC1 was turned on and hooked to the network. Unfortunately, my children (<6 years) operating on networked PC2 are a few years away from being computer savvy enough to turn on PC1 in order to access the printer. The final nail in the coffin was the demise of PC1's hard drive. So, I started looking at print servers. For those with slightly less knowledge than myself, a print server allows your printer to stand alone on your network. That allows any computer on your network access to the printer regardless of which computers are turned on. My print server had to support a multifunction USB printer (scan, print, copy). I started researching print servers and found the effort to be depressing. Every server out there had equal users that liked and dis-liked the hardware. I settled on the Netgear WGPS606 for five reasons:
1. Explicitly supported my printer.
2. Netgear has a reasonable reputation (no where near perfect through)
3. Had a built in switch
4. Supported up to two printers
5. I had gift cards at the store that offered it.
Note that I didn't mention anything about wireless capabilities. The un-named store only carried wireless print servers.
So, what has been my experience with this print server? If I was a computer novice, I would be pulling what's left of my hair out. First, the WGPS606 basic network IP addressing scheme does not match my router (router 192.168.1.* versus netgear 192.168.0.*). In theory, that is easily correctable but you need access to the internal print server settings. I spent a good hour changing the network settings on my pc to mesh up with the print server. The print server did not want to assign a network address unless it was specified by the computer. A careful reading of the users manual (on the CD) eventually gave me the info to get into the netgear's internal configuration menu. An interesting omission was the lack of gateway or dns input. I could set the IP address and subnet mask which worked with my router. Second, my laptop never spotted the wireless SSID even though the print server said the radio was enabled. I didn't need the wireless capability and eventually turned the radio off as it was interfering with my laptop's wireless connection. Third, a print server does not necessarily mean that you can access the printer over the network. In my case, I had to do a dedicated install of the printer on each computer in my network using the USB cable. Then, I could use the Netgear utility to hook those printer drivers to the new network connection.
Can I recommend this print server? Yes if you are computer savvy (and your printer is supported), otherwise NO.
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