Wirless printing via iMac and wireless router

Jul 25, '06 07:30:00AM

Contributed by: bobthekelpie

Here's a relatively simple solution if you have a wireless network, a (wireless) router, and a network-enabled printer ... and your router is in a different location from both your iMac and your printer. I connected the printer (HP Photosmart 2575) to the iMac via hard-wire ethernet (using a crossover cable). I then allowed the iMac to dynamically allocate an IP address to the printer.

Next, I enabled a static route in my wireless router, so that requests to the printer's IP address went via the 'gateway' IP address of the iMac -- this address was the IP address of the AirPort adapter. The iMac seems quite happy to forward IP requests from the AirPort adapter to the Ethernet adaptor. I can now treat the printer as a networked printer (despite it being on a different subnet), and hence set up the printer on my Windows laptop. Hope that kind of makes sense -- I am happy to expand on any detail if anyone's interested!

Comments (7)


Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060719050529744