Yet another project...

The D-Link DNS-323 home NAS device has a few nice features. Once of which that I wanted to test, was its print serving capabilities and various OS's.

Turns out, to test this is only a 5 minute job! By connecting a USB printer to the DNS-323, the NAS recognizes the printer instantaneously. At this point, it is only a matter of having your networked computers to see the printer through windows networking or Bonjour services on OS X.

While it was VERY easy on Leopard, Tiger was a bit more confusing. I started with Tiger, so I will here as well.

Both OS X 10.4 and 10.5 start by going system preferences to reach the printer and fax setup options. By clicking the "+" to add a new printer, the next step is where it gets different.

On Tiger, while it asks for IP addresses and information about the printer, I actually had to choose "More Printers..." to find it. Once this was done, It displays a "browser" of printers found over Windows Networking workgroup shares, Bluetooth, and AppleTalk printer shares. It also has options for connecting to various manufacture’s printers via IP (Canon, HP, EPSON, Lexmark) but this option didn’t work for me. However, under Windows Printing located by workgroup. I believe this works in this manor due to the fact that the DNS-323 is associated with a windows networking workgroup, and basically exposes the connected printer as a service that can be connected to. The process of connecting to it requires a userid/password that should be setup on the DNS-323. The only thing left to do is select the model of printer to locate the driver needed for it.

While this isn’t such a big deal, it was a bit easier on Leopard. On Leopard, simply choose to add a printer the same manner as above. Once that is done, it will have a much better way to "browse" various printer service shares, and find the printer you are looking for. Choose the "Windows Printing" tab at the top, and then browse the workgroup to see the shared printer. If you select to locate a driver, you can type in a search string for your printer model, and be shown the correct driver to use.

Recap:
The DNS-323 shares printers over windows networking via workgroups. As long as your OS can locate devices in this manner, you use that method to locate the printer directly. It is possible to share the printer from a PC that can see it, but if you do this, it sort of defeats the purpose of a print server. At that point, the PC that is sharing the printer has to be on to allow printing to occur. If all clients connect via the networked printer and not through a PC that is sharing the printer, nothing except the router and DNS-323 have to be on to print documents on that printer.