Airport Express as a Print Server

At my house my husband and I have the great divide. I’m a Mac user. He uses PCs. Unfortunately we have one lovely HP laserjet printer that we want to share. This poses a problem for two reasons. One my husband’s computer and the printer are downstairs. Since he doesn’t leave his computer on all the time, this is a major pain in the butt. Second, if I try to print through my husband’s PC the result is a gobbledygook page. Apparently the driver doesn’t work correctly on a Windows shared printer.

I’ve been dealing with this for some time now, more than three years in fact. However, since I started writing the book and proofing drafts, it has become somewhat more problematic. So I decided enough is enough and that I was going to purchase a print server to allow us both to use the printer over the network regardless of which computer we were on or if another computer was on.

When I started looking at print servers I thought that this would be a very simple matter. However, I hit a major obstacle almost immediately. Most printer servers are wired printers servers. Meaning you plug them into your router then you plug the printer into the printer server. My problem was that my router was in a different room and on a different floor from my printers. So what I needed really was a wireless printer server capable of connecting to my existing wireless router and that my PCs and Macs could both connect to. After much searching I realized that my best option was likely to use an Airport Express.

Normally most people use their Airport Express while they travel or to connect their stereo to iTunes remotely or as a wireless router for their home network. Since I already have a wireless router I really wanted just to have the Airport Express to connect to my existing wireless network and allow the computers on the network to send jobs to the printer. While the documentation said this was possible and should be easy, I was concerned that it might not work for two reasons.

1. I have my wireless networking protected with encryption
2. I use an access control list to limit what computers can connect to my wireless network

I was concerned that these two things would keep the Airport Express from being able to get on the network. However, while I did need to deal with these issues the solutions to these issues were rather simple. First, I followed the instructions that came with the Airport Express on configuring it. During this process I was asked if I wanted to connect the Airport to an existing network and what the encryption key was for that network. Next, the MAC address for the Airport Express is on the physical device. So all I needed to do was add this to my wireless routers access control list. Adding the newly networked printer to my Mac via Bonjour was a snap. Getting it setup for my husband was slightly more complicated. I installed Bonjour for Windows and was able to browse, see the printer, then add it.

Overall this setup took me less than a half an hour, which was much less time than I anticipated and a fantastic result by my standards. I’m even considering getting another Airport Express to hook up my color photo printer in another room.