Advice on network devices

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

A freind of mine wants to set up a network with 2 pc's, a network printer and a network hard drives. Any recommendations?

 

[Castiel]

Well, have both PC's on the same network(switch). And hook the printer on one computer, enable it to be shared in the network. And on both PC's enable it to share the hard drives(media) over the network.

 

[Disparia]

If his printer has an ethernet port, I'd skip the computer host and plug directly into the switch.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

i have an idea of what to do i just want recommended devices

the printer needed is b/w
the ext hdd should be 1.5tb

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

is it better to get a router witha usb drive to share the hard drive or get a rj45 hard drive?

 

[mrhuggles]

it depends on what you want, if size isn't a concern i would set up a computer as a router with openWRT + X-Wrt, if size is a concern i would grab around 100 dollars worth of router with couple USB ports and the ability to install good software on it.

but yeah as long as you have good software its REALLY nice to have all that stuff directly on the router, the printer and network drive i mean.

btw you might wanna get a 5400rpm drive, they make a lot less heat and because of that work much better with external drive enclosures

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

so what products would u send me to?

 

[lemonadesoda]

Dont share a printer by hooking it directly off a PC. It means that PC must always be on!

A print server built into a printer is pretty cheap... alternatively get a dedicated print server off ebay. Many routers incl. print server functions too. HOWEVER be warned that an inbuilt is much better... and you may be disappointed by a 3rd party print server.

 

[[I.R.A]_FBi]

that was the problem why iw as telling him get a network attached printer, but the hard drive is the problem ...

 

[mrhuggles]

thats why i said you can take an old computer, like a pentium or so and turn it into a router... like with installing openWRT on it

 

[lemonadesoda]

that was the problem why iw as telling him get a network attached printer, but the hard drive is the problem ...

Get a cheap, LOW POWER, NAS, like a Buffalo linkstation or QNAP. That can be always on, and uses 10th the power of a regular PC. You can even FTP or HTTP to it to access your files over the internet even when the PCs are off. That's wat I have; I can access my data over the internet from anywhere in the world... and no PC is left on. Just the NAS.

 

[mrhuggles]

if you look in the packages youll see that there are plenty of clients like usenet clients, torrent clients etc, perfect for that sort of thing.