D-Link DPR-1260 RangeBooster G Multifunction Print Server

Average customer rating: 3.0

Works with Brother DCP-1000
Works with HP D145 Office Jet All-In-One Printer
Works Excellent - amazingly easy
Horrible Setup, Lousy and Incomplete Docs, Prints Well, Scans Not So Well
Easy setup, works perfectly

Similar Items:

D-Link DIR-635 RangeBooster N 650 Router
D-Link DIR-655 Extreme N Wireless Router
Tripp Lite USB 2.0 Cable USBa to USBb with Connectors (6 FT)
Wireless G Print Server with Multifunction Printer Support
D-Link DWL-2100AP Wireless Access Point w/ SNMP, AES, 802.11g, 108Mbps

Listmania:

Road Worthy Office Equipment - FEI

D-Link DPR-1260 RangeBooster G Multifunction Print Server

Manufacturer: D-Link Systems, Inc.
Product Group: CE
Binding: Electronics
ASIN: B000EUJ1PQ

Related Categories:

Broadband Access

Print Servers

Broadband Access

Print Servers

Print Servers

Product Description

The D-Link RangeBooster G Multifunction Print Server DPR-1260 is the ideal network printing solution for small offices, home offices, schools, and other businesses that require sharing multiple printers. This is D-Link's most versatile and easiest to use Print Server yet. When attaching multiple devices, the Quick Installation Wizard takes all the work out of setting up the Print Server and configuring the attached printers. Multiple ports give you the option of adding multiple printers, multifunction printers, or scanners to the network. RangeBooster G technology improves wireless performance, reducing the time required to send print jobs to the print server. Tested with over 100 different printer models, this Print Server offers class-leading device compatibility. Using the web-based interface, easily scan documents, photos, and more directly to your computer. This print server is compatible with a wide range of USB multifunction printers and scanners and is backward compatible with USB 1.1 printers. The Ethernet port on the Print Server can be used as a wireless bridge. This provides wireless connectivity for any Ethernet-enabled device, such as a computer, Digital Video Recorder (DVR), or Network-Attached Storage (NAS) to the wireless network. Wireless Transmit Power - 15dBm +/- 2dBm External Antenna Type - Single Detachable Reverse SMA Modulation Technology - Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), Complementary Code Keying (CCK) Security - 64/128-bit WEP, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA-PSK, WPA-EAP) Transport Protocols - TCP/IP, NetBEUI Device Management - Internet Explorer v6 or other Java-enabled Browsers, DHCP Server and Client Diagnostic LEDs - Power, Link/Activity, WLAN Dimensions - Width 5.59 x Height 1.22 x Depth 4.29 inch Weight - 0.46 pounds Ethernet port can be used as a wireless bridge

Customer Reviews:

Works with Brother DCP-1000.......2007-06-12

I have 4 laptops (Windows XP) and two PC (Windows 2000) and one wireless internet router. It took me about 10 minutes to set up.

1) Connect printer server to wireless internet router LAN port;
2) Connect printer USB cable to USB port1 of printer server;
3) Turn on the power of printer server;
4) In Internet Explorer, type http://dlinkps-xxxxxx, (the xxxxxx is the last 6 characters of MAC address, located on the bottom of printer server), and in the setup tab, follow the steps, then is done;
5) If can not see the setup screen from Internet Explorer, reset the printer server.

After I set up, I tested the speed of printing, there is no difference of using wireless or direct connection.

This printer server has 4 USB ports which allow me to connect other two printers.

Works with HP D145 Office Jet All-In-One Printer.......2007-06-09

After looking into all the reviews for other wireless multifunction print servers, the DPR-1260 had more positive feedbacks. Not to say that it didn't have it's fair share of negative ones. I took a slight leap of faith and went ahead and purchased it since I'm not new to networking devices. The package from amazon was delivered pretty quick, something like 2 business days. I'm impressed.

Anyways, like most have stated, the manual and d-link support site offered very little guidance on how to set this product up. Everything seemed irrelevant to the problems I was running into. Sometimes I wonder who are writing these manuals, definitely not the people who designed and built this product. You would think to have a bunch of product testers write the manual and have a combination of technological inclined and not so inclined users go through the motions of setting it up using the manual. Ok ok, i'm done venting.

With that said, the dpr-1260 was not that hard to set up. I just plugged everything in. Set up the UPnP and SDDP Discovery Services (found in Administrative services) to have it run automatically. Went to My Network Places and made sure that the device showed up. Double clicked on it to "invoke" the dpr-1260's setup page to show up in the web browser. Luckily for me, the device detected my HP D145 Officejet Multifunction printer right away. Now what the manual failed to mention was how to setup the printer on your actual computer. To do this, I went to "Add Printer" somewhere in the Control Panel window. The important part is to make sure that in the wizard, you choose Local Printer, uncheck Automatic Detect, click next. Then in the "Select a Printer Port" window, choose "Create a new port" and in the pull down menu choose TCP/IP Port. Next. When it asks you what IP, make sure to enter the IP address that your router's DHCP server gave your DPR-1260 (should be the IP address that you use to view the DPR-1260 settings).

All in all, once set up the device works great and the scan function although very basic, works. I'm giving this product a 4 star because I'm not going to blame the device, but the manual writers. Hope this helps somebody.

Works Excellent - amazingly easy.......2007-06-03

I just installed this D-Link wireless print server and it installed into Vista perfectly. I just followed the quick start guide, and didn't even put in the cd. I found it right away on my network, and as soon as I clicked on it, the utility to access it opened up. I have 2 printers connected, it found both immediately, installed the drivers, and I was printing! For years I have struggled with Linksys wireless print server wps54gu2 and it was horrible to try to get working with each new notebook I got--extremely difficult to set up and does NOT work with Vista. I highly recommend this D-Link print server to everyone, and am now looking into getting a new D-link router to attach my external hard drive. You will be very happy with this D-Link wireless print server - I am!

Horrible Setup, Lousy and Incomplete Docs, Prints Well, Scans Not So Well.......2007-06-01

Pros:

Combination wireless 4 port USB print server, scanner interface, and single port bridge. So far, the bridge's single ethernet port has worked flawlessly. Printing, once I got past the configuration nightmare, works great using a Kyocera FS-1010 laser printer and a HP-6110 Office Jet MFP from either Win XP or Linux/CUPS.

Supports scanning for some HP and Epson products, but not all. Check the D-Link web site and users' web reviews to see if yours is supported. Ditto for printers.

Works with some "problem" printers that other USB print servers either can't handle at all, or handle poorly. This unit replaced a D-Link DP-311U that had to be reset after every print job on my FS-1010. A SMC 2621W-U wireless print server would not work at all with that particular printer.

Supports WPA and WPA2 encryption. Anything less is really not secure. This has allowed us to retire a separate WEP encrypted wireless system that we used just for printers.

Works with most OS's, including Linux. Once it is set up, it doesn't know or care what operating system you are running, at least for printing.

Cons:

Absolutely the worst setup possible. Out of the box it only works with DHCP. No default fixed IP whatsoever, even after a timeout. Wireless encryption must be off. SSID must be "D-Link" This thing's setup requires that your wireless network conforms to its requirements, instead of the other way around. It is absurd.

Scanning is browser based, not HP or Epson native, and it doesn't work properly with all browsers. Linux is worse than Windows. IE and Firefox worked OK for me on Windows, Opera did not. Nothing was 100% on Linux. Scanning resolution was less than the scanner was capable of, even at the highest setting. White tone scans to a light blue color.

Completely inadequate documentation. Most of the set up info in this review is either not mentioned, or is buried in useless garbage. Nothing at all on browser javascript requirements for scanning.

User interface inadequate. There is no signal level indicator. You can't tell how well the unit is receiving, other than the wireless LED id lit. The printer wizard doesn't always provide an error message when it is unable to function. It just returns and sits there silently. The pages require a manual refresh to update. It does not work properly with all browsers.

No telnet interface. [ If you don't understand that, you won't care; it's a command line thing. :-) ]

Other Points Typical Of Wireless Print Servers, Neither Pro Nor Con:

It can't work with so called winprinters, also known as GDI printers, or host based printers. These cheapies lack internal smarts, and rely on Windows for ALL their processing. That's not D-Link's fault.

Ink level reporting and fax functions of multi function devices aren't supported, as D-Link states.

The USB ports are for printers only. They can not handle other USB devices.

A printer driver has to be installed on every PC on the network for EACH printer connected to the print server, unless there is no need for a particular PC to print to a particular printer. A printer instance (print server connected printer) also has to be created in the Printers and Faxes folder, or its equivalent, on each PC. This can be a lot of work and seems to be frequently misunderstood.

The Basics Of How To Set Up A DPR-1260:

This is the stuff that is either missing or not readily apparent in the documentation.

1. Your network MUST have a DHCP server running. If you don't know what this means, you almost certainly have one running already.

2. Either set your wireless to unencrypted and broadcast an SSID of "D-Link" (caps matter) OR connect an ethernet cable between your DPR-1260 and your router/hub/switch. I recommend the latter. That way, it's less likely that you will end up with your print server connected to your neighbor's unsecure-default-settings D-Link based wireless network, which is entirely possible.

3. If you DID NOT use the cable method, the wireless LED on the unit MUST be on solid to proceed. That indicates that the DPR-1260 has associated with your (you hope) wireless network and can get an IP via DHCP. If not, recheck steps 1 and 2.

4. Follow the Install Guide's procedure for connecting to the print server, which might work, OR log into whatever box has the DHCP server and note which IP was served to the DPR-1260. Paste the IP into a browser to bring up the print server's user interface, which will work.

If you have the print server cabled to the network, you should be able leave it there for the rest of the setup (except firmware updates) if you like. Otherwise, connect a PC to the print server's ethernet port.

5. I strongly recommend that you assign a fixed IP to the print server, so that you can always find it with a known IP address that can be bookmarked. Naturally, I also recommend you use WPA encryption or better on your network, and change its SSID to something other than D-Link.

6. If the printer wizard doesn't work properly, reduce the security settings on IE. Other browsers don't seem to work here, BTW. The print server will download a windows executable, which will run on your PC and set up a wireless printer instance. It works best if you install a standard driver first, so you may have to temporarily move the printer to the machine first, or vice versa. Linux users use CUPS, instead. It is much, much easier.

Final Thoughts:

The javascript that drives the user interface shows a lot of errors on browsers that can report that sort of thing. It appears that D-Link has written the scripts for Internet Explorer instead of using standards based code. They need to fix this.

They also need to fix the ugly light blue/gray that passes for white in the scans.

My unit came with firmware v1.20. I updated to v1.21. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the update did not reset the unit to the factory defaults. Hopefully, further update releases will improve scanning and the UI. This is badly needed.

D-Link should absolutely provide a documented default fixed IP after DHCP timeout in the next software release

If you have a D-Link based wireless network running no security and all the original default settings, the DPR-1260 will probably work right out of the box, and you will think it is wonderful and give it a five star rating. ;-)

On the other hand, if the last paragraph doesn't describe you, then you have some degree of work ahead of you. How much depends on your networking knowledge, and to some degree, how well we users have written our reviews, which is a good indicator of how poor the documentation is.

Two stars for the functionality it does have. Nothing for setup, documentation, or user interface.

Our wireless is almost 100% D-Link. Nevertheless, they have convinced me to look elsewhere for wireless products in the future. No wireless device should require that the network be made insecure in order to install it, even temporarily, and nothing should be so poorly documented.

Easy setup, works perfectly.......2007-05-21

! got this print server, took out of the box,connected to the router and it was ready to print in 10 minutes

Electronics:

Electronics

Electronics