Trying to connect PC's, printer and hotspot

[IT Tinkerer]

Hi I'm a bit new to this forum thing. Hope I'm doing this right.

Wonder if you can help? My son has an office with 8 laptops that all connect to a single WiFi hotspot. He also has a wireless printer. I'm looking at putting in some hardware to allow him to connect all his laptops to the shared wireless printer AND the wireless hotspot.  I'm thinking a router would do the printer, but not the hotspot. What would I need? Can anyone help?

Thanks

ITT

[deanwebb]

Welcome to the fourms! We're actually quite glad to see topics like this... which I've moved to the "home networking" section, which is about to become the Home/Small office section.

Now to help you out... if the printer can connect to the hotspot, you don't need anything else.

If it can't, then you are looking at a device that can bridge the connection from printer to hotspot. Either way, I don't think that you would need a router, since routers connect diverse networks, not devices to networks.

Now, if the hotspot can't make the connections at all, then a product offered up as a home wireless router may be what you're looking for, even though all the routing it will do will be to connect the home network to the Internet. The rest of what that device will do will be to provide wireless access to all the devices that connect to it.

Let me know if you need more explanation or if there are other considerations that can affect the answer.

[IT Tinkerer]

Thanks!
Surely if the printer connects to the hotspot, everyone else in the office complex who also uses the hotspot will be able to use it?

[deanwebb]

OK, so some more details on the hotspot are needed here. There's also the question of whether or not you want your office PCs connected to a public hotspot, since it is VERY VERY VERY VERY VERY easy to spoof a public hotspot. Massive security risk. You might want to go instead with a private wireless access point, such as a Meraki solution, that can give you secure access.

[IT Tinkerer]

Dean, thanks for your advice. The pcs are in a rented office complex with multiple businesses that supplies a WiFi hotspot to the office users. How can you hook the printer up to the hotspot so that only his coworkers can use it?

[deanwebb]

See if the printer has some security features. Alternatively, attach it to a Windows PC or Server and share it as a secured print queue.