USB to ethernet cable

J

J Lunis

Win XP SP2
Hope this is the proper ng for this question.
Have a home network consisting of a PC connected by cable to my router,
and a laptop that connects wirelessly.
I have four devices I would like to try to connect to my router. All
are USB devices. I have read about an adapter cable (USB on one end,
ethernet on the other) that may allow me to connect these devices to my
router so they can be visible across the network.
Epson printer
Tivo DVR
Western Digital USB external drive
Dell photo printer.
Will the adapter cable do what I want it to do?
 
G

Gordon

J Lunis said:
Win XP SP2
Hope this is the proper ng for this question.
Have a home network consisting of a PC connected by cable to my router,
and a laptop that connects wirelessly.
I have four devices I would like to try to connect to my router. All are
USB devices. I have read about an adapter cable (USB on one end, ethernet
on the other) that may allow me to connect these devices to my router so
they can be visible across the network.
Epson printer
Tivo DVR
Western Digital USB external drive
Dell photo printer.
Will the adapter cable do what I want it to do?


You can't just connect any old device to a router/switch and expect it to
work. You need a Print Server for each printer, like HP Jetdirect, and some
sort of box with an OS for the external HDD. I don't know what a Tivo DVR
is, but I suspect you can't connect THAT directly to a router/switch either.
 
J

J Lunis

Gordon said:
You can't just connect any old device to a router/switch and expect it to
work. You need a Print Server for each printer, like HP Jetdirect, and some
sort of box with an OS for the external HDD. I don't know what a Tivo DVR
is, but I suspect you can't connect THAT directly to a router/switch either.
Interesting. I wrote to Epson about using just such a cable and
received the following response . . .
"You may be able to place your unit on a network, however the adapter
you speak of is not made by Epson and may or may not work."
Maybe I am focusing to much on "may or may not" but Epson did not flatly
reject it.
WD also qualifies use of such a cable with 'possibly, try and see.'
I admit, Dell said ~ 18 months ago I had to use a print server.

As a technical neaderthal, I was hoping someone made a network cable
specifically for these needs.
 
G

Gordon

J Lunis said:
Interesting. I wrote to Epson about using just such a cable and received
the following response . . .
"You may be able to place your unit on a network, however the adapter you
speak of is not made by Epson and may or may not work."
Maybe I am focusing to much on "may or may not" but Epson did not flatly
reject it.
WD also qualifies use of such a cable with 'possibly, try and see.'
I admit, Dell said ~ 18 months ago I had to use a print server.

As a technical neaderthal, I was hoping someone made a network cable
specifically for these needs.


Not as such - unless your router has a print server cabability (and some do)
or your printer has an inbuilt network card (some do) you will definitely
need a print server of some sort. DLink do a "pocket" print server that sits
directly on the parallel port on the printer (doesn't work if the printer
doesn't have one!). In the tow former cases yes, you just connect your
printer to the router/switch via a CAT5 patch cable. Has your router got
FIVE ports on it?
 
L

Lem

J said:
Win XP SP2
Hope this is the proper ng for this question.
Have a home network consisting of a PC connected by cable to my router,
and a laptop that connects wirelessly.
I have four devices I would like to try to connect to my router. All
are USB devices. I have read about an adapter cable (USB on one end,
ethernet on the other) that may allow me to connect these devices to my
router so they can be visible across the network.
Epson printer
Tivo DVR
Western Digital USB external drive
Dell photo printer.
Will the adapter cable do what I want it to do?

It depends on what this "adapter cable" really is. As Gordon indicated,
you can't install a USB plug on one end of a piece of wire and an RJ45
plug on the other end. Most USB/Ethernet adapters are intended to
permit a computer that has a USB jack to connect to an Ethernet network.
As such, they have drivers that need to be installed on the computer
in order to function.

Because none of the devices you mention are computers (actually, the
TiVo is, but it doesn't run Windows, so the result is the same), none of
them will run the driver supplied with the "cable" or "adapter."

That said, there are driverless adapters. These often are sold as "game
adapters" or similar or, for printers, "print servers."

The easy devices are the two printers. Search for "print server". For
example, here's what Linksys sells: http://tinyurl.com/2f6akv IIRC, this
is a fairly expensive item, and you can probably find cheaper, simpler
devices from the other usual home networking vendors (Netgear, D-Link,
Belkin, etc).

Linksys also sells a product that will allow you to connect your USB
disk: http://tinyurl.com/37n4aj Again, if you search the other vendors,
you'll find competing products.

TiVo works with various devices. See http://tinyurl.com/yn5yms
 
J

J Lunis

Gordon said:
Not as such - unless your router has a print server cabability (and some do)
or your printer has an inbuilt network card (some do) you will definitely
need a print server of some sort. DLink do a "pocket" print server that sits
directly on the parallel port on the printer (doesn't work if the printer
doesn't have one!). In the tow former cases yes, you just connect your
printer to the router/switch via a CAT5 patch cable. Has your router got
FIVE ports on it?
Five ports. Don't know. One the front I can see numbers -1,2,3,4.
But on the back I have one port? for the electric cord and five ports
that accept ethernet plugs.
Netgear WGR614
 
G

Gordon

J Lunis said:
Five ports. Don't know. One the front I can see numbers -1,2,3,4.
But on the back I have one port? for the electric cord and five ports that
accept ethernet plugs.
Netgear WGR614

OK. It has four ports and no print server capability. Therefore you can only
connect your PC and three other devices. You WILL need either printers with
NIC cards in them, or a print server for each printer in order to use your
printers over the network. You should connect the external HDD to your PC
and share it. The Tivo, I don't know because I don't know what it is.

HTH
 
J

J Lunis

Gordon said:
OK. It has four ports and no print server capability. Therefore you can only
connect your PC and three other devices. You WILL need either printers with
NIC cards in them, or a print server for each printer in order to use your
printers over the network. You should connect the external HDD to your PC
and share it. The Tivo, I don't know because I don't know what it is.

HTH
Well, not that I doubt you guys - looks to me like I will not waste my
money on an impossible dream. But. . .
FWIW, I had written to Belkin about the capabilities of their adapter
cable. The response follows.
I believe the F5D5050 is a USB to ethernet adapter cable. I want to
hook an Epson printer, a Dell photo printer, a Western Digital USB
hard >drive, and a Tivo DVR to my router. All four devices have only
USB >ports. Will the F5D5050 allow these devices to successfully
connect to >an empty ethernet port?
The response?
 
G

Gordon

J Lunis said:
Well, not that I doubt you guys - looks to me like I will not waste my
money on an impossible dream. But. . .
FWIW, I had written to Belkin about the capabilities of their adapter
cable. The response follows.
hard >drive, and a Tivo DVR to my router. All four devices have only USB


What Belkin failed to mention is that you will need to assign an IP address
to the printer - you can ONLY do that (afaik) by using either a print server
or a printer with an NIC card in it. The fact that the Belkin cable will
connect a USB port to ethernet is fine - as long as the ethernet port you
connect it to is a print server!
 
J

J Lunis

Gordon said:
What Belkin failed to mention is that you will need to assign an IP address
to the printer - you can ONLY do that (afaik) by using either a print server
or a printer with an NIC card in it. The fact that the Belkin cable will
connect a USB port to ethernet is fine - as long as the ethernet port you
connect it to is a print server!
Yeah, I've already decided not to waste my $$. thanks
 

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