I am shopping for a USB print server. Basically, I want to print to an
Epson R320 printer through a print server on my 10/100 ethernet, and
still be able to see status information such as ink levels.
Does such a print server exist?
This would be hard to do in a print server. Simply put, a "server"
takes stuff from one place, let's say the kitchen, and puts it else
where it needs to go, let's say your table. You could have data to
relay back to where the stuff came from, let's say you wish to say the
food was good and compliment the chef but this message is typicaly not
relayed because it's above and beyond the job description of a server.
Print servers are typicaly one way communication that hold a job and
send it to the printer... there are no real established protocalls for
two way communication. They can be designed to do this, but support
for this is limited except by the OEM printserver solution where the
print server is designed specificly for a series of printers made by
the same company.
The alternative would be something I was intoduced to sometime last
year... a wireless USB hub. Unlike a server it's job is to permit the
use of devices, such as a printer, keyboard/mouse, on a network. It
would not act like a "server" as in it won't grab a print job, store
it, and send it to the printer. This was handy in the olden days of
computing when computers had at best 1 meg of memory and a print job
would either slow down your computer or would render your computer
unuseable till the job was done. A wireless USB hub would simply be no
different than a link between a PC and a Printer with no buffering, and
no serving.
http://www.keyspan.com/products/usb/server/
I have no experence with this product.
