Get a FREE fully-working copy of Steganos Security Suite 7 (worth £49.99) when you sign up to the Practical PC Newsletter. Review: Netgear WGPS606 Wireless Print Server and Bridge/4 port Switch
Iain Laskey extends his wireless network's range in this Netgear Review
| Product | WGPS606 Wireless Print Server and 4 port switch |
|---|---|
| Company | Netgear |
| Web | www.netgear.co.uk |
| Price | Around £75 |
| We like | Setup Wizard, looks |
| We don't like | Can be tricky to set up, not bi-directional, possible speed issues. |
| Rating | 6/10 |
| Requirements |
I'm normally a big fan of Netgear's kit. It usually works well, has a good feature set and a nice price. Thus it was with high expectations that I opened the box of their latest print server, the WGPS606.
The WGPS606 is an interesting combination of a wireless print server plus an Ethernet bridge with a four port switch. I suppose this would make sense if you are attaching a few non wireless equipped PCs to an existing wireless network but I can't imagine many people fall under this category unless you're building a new network from scratch. Otherwise I'd expect the PCs to either have wireless network cards already or be hard wired in to the LAN. As such, I can't help but feel it's one of those things that seemed a good idea to marketing but someone forgot to stop them in time.
The unit itself is very attractive and comes in a a white case with a generous smattering of lights to show you what is going on. At the rear there are two USB ports for the printer(s) and the four network connectors. It comes with a set of feet to allow it to be used horizontally or vertically.
The WGPS606 comes with a pair of wizards, one for adding printers to its USB connectors and one for adding PCs to the 4 ports. On my test system I had a fair bit of trouble getting it working and it was only after tweaking the firewall, disabling WEP, configuring the unit then re-enabling WEP that I managed to get it up and running. I was also caught out initially by the fact it effectively has two MAC addresses, the wireless one, as quoted on its case and another which relates to the wired side of things. It's also worth reading the PDF files on the CD as these contain a lot of useful information that is lacking in both the Wizard and the rather confusing printed 'manual'. Better yet, forget the Wizards and just stick to the web interface if you have a reasonable understanding of configuring Wireless kit.
I tested it with an Epson 890 printer and found it worked fine. The wizard created the correct port mapping and pages came out nice and quickly. One snag was that the PC was unable to get the printer status back and couldn't tell how much ink was left. It also reported a constant stream of communication error messages until I disabled them in the driver. On checking with Netgear they advised the device was not bidirectional and as such, no printers would be able to get their status information. A major omission in my opinion.
On the plus side, it does support both 802.11b and 802.11g as well as the RangeMax standard. It also copes fine with both WEP and WPA-PSK encryption. I tried both and had no problems. The unit can be configured via its built in web interface which worked well and was easy to use.
The WGPS606 hasn't been tested with all printers and the Netgear (US) site has a short list of ones that are known to work. You may want to ensure you can return it to your supplier though if it turns out it can't cope with your particular printer.
One oddity was that the test wireless network seemed to suffer in throughput when the WGPS606 was on. This may have been a configuration problem as the test rig includes two wireless routers in repeater mode to extend the range. I couldn't find any combination of settings that restored the speed though. It was still usable but clearly something was not quite right.
Conclusion
Once you get past the difficult configuration and poor printed documentation, this isn't a bad unit. For the price, the ability to support two printers wirelessly is to be commended and the print speed was quite acceptable. The inclusion of a bridge and switch may be useful to some people and at the price, are effectively free features so no real issues there. The inability to report the printer status is more worrying and hopefully a future firmware upgrade might be able to address this unless it's a hardware limitation.
