Guide: How to use the Technicolor TG582N to share ANY printer via your network

[#1]

Sorry if this has been posted before.
I had Plusnet installed yesterday and was sent the Technicolor TG582N. It has a USB port on the side which can, with about 15 minutes' work, be used to share a non-wireless printer via your home network. I have slightly adapted the following instructions which I found on the BE Broadband Wiki which work well for the Plusnet router too. This guide is for Windows 7 and 8.

Download PuTTY from here:
http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe
Open it and type 192.168.1.253 as the host name, leave the port as 22 and change the connection type to "Telnet". Press OK.
When requested, type the administrator username for your router (default is "admin"), and the administrator password (default is printed on your Plusnet router card)
Now copy the following commands one at a time (one per line) and right-click in PuTTY then press enter to send them.

:printersharing LPD config state enabled 
:printersharing LPD queue add name=queueTG587n type=Raw 
:saveall 
:exit

Now plug your printer's USB cable into the USB port on your router
____________ From this point onwards, follow these instructions on every computer you wish to be able to access the network printer.
First, make sure the drivers for your printer are already installed on your computer. If not, get them from the manufacturer's website.
Go to Control Panel --> Hardware and Sound --> Devices and Printers. Choose Add a Printer.
Click on "Add a new printer" at the top of the window.
Click on "Add a network or wireless printer".
On the next window, ignore the searching and just click on "the printer wasn't listed" at the bottom.
On the next screen, choose the "Add a printer using TCP/IP" option and click next.
For Device type, choose "TCP/IP" for the Hostname, enter "192.168.1.253" (without quotes) for the portname and enter "My_Router_192.168.1.253" (without quotes). Uncheck the box "Query the Printer" and choose next.
Wait a few minutes.
Now tick "Custom", press settings. Tick "LPR" and in the "Queue Name" field, enter "queueTG582n". Press OK then press next.
Choose the printer you have from the list and press next. Make sure the option to use the drivers already installed is selected and press Next. Choose "Do not share this printer". Now you're good to go!

Hope this helps somebody.

[#2]

Found that this basically works for me on my Mac with the following variations:
Start the Terminal and then 'telnet 192.168.1.254' to connect to the router admin interface (not sure why 192.168.1.253 on port 22 didn't work for me).
Enter the printersharing setup commands as shown (I used a different name for the queue but otherwise identical).
On the Mac in System Preferences, add a new printer of type IP and enter 192.168.1.253 as the address - you can leave the Queue field blank. Choose the Select Software option from the Use list and then click on the driver for your printer type.
Hope this helps.

[#3]

.254 is the router ip, .253 is the shared ip.

[#4]

Cool. Do you know if it also supports file sharing from USB?

[#5]

I think so I don't use it so can't say for sure, but I believe it appears as a Samba share (Windows network) but needs to be a FAT formatted disk from memory.

[#6]

Works fine, just need to enable it...telnet and login as admin, then...
{admin}=>contentsharing cifs config name=Technicolor workgroup=WORKGROUP comment="DSL Gateway" state=enabled
{admin}=>:contentsharing cifs list                                           
CIFS service:               
    name: Technicolor
    comment: DSL Gateway
    workgroup: WORKGROUP
    enable: 1
{admin}=>saveall

...plug in your FAT format USB drive and then connect to the share using smb://192.168.1.253 from linux or the equivalent from windows (\\Technicolor seems to work on my old XP box). Out of luck on OSX Mavericks though because of reworked SMB support...
06/11/2013 11:59:40.000 kernel[0]: smb1_smb_negotiate: Support for the server TECHNICOLOR has been deprecated (PreXP), disconnecting

[#7]

Nice

[#8]

But what about all in one units with scanners? - Is it possible to use a scanner over a network?

[#9]

The answer is in 2 parts:
a) yes
b) not with the 582
You need a unit that will act as a scanner proxy which this doesn't it only acts as a simple LPD (Line Printer Daemon).

[#10]

Does anyone know how to also send printer info like ink levels etc as they don't show
Thanks

[#11]

You can't you need a real (wifi or usb) connection or a special adaptor to do that.

[#12]

Thanks for this - very helpful.  Do you know if I can plug a USB hub into the router and run a printer and a hard disk from it?

[#13]

Hi there dparnell, welcome to the forum.
I'd guess not just by simply plugging it all in because each device would need it's own LAN IP address? and the USB port has just got the fixed address, BUT I'm no expert on this port and have to confess I have not played with the port on mine at all. It might however be possible to reconfigure the port to allocate DHCP IP addresses or fixed IP addresses for known devices. The CLI is quite powerful but there is little to no guidance in the manual on how to use most of the commands other than the syntax.
Hopefully some of the more knowledgable router guys will have a better idea and pick this up.
I would recommend you backup your existing working configuration before having a play - in other words suck it and see - at least you can reload your working config if it doesn't do/work as expected.
I'm sure there will be a number of users interested in the answer to this.

[#14]

Quote

I'm sure there will be a number of users interested in the answer to this.

Hmm, interesting question that!. As AO says, there's only one IP allocated for all the functions on the USB port. This thread http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,109978.0.html/ seemed to imply that printer and content sharing might work together but I don't think we ever got a definitive answer.

[#15]

I think it should just work. Each device wouldn't need a different IP address. It should be much the same as sharing a USB drive and a USB printer from a computer.