Cool Tech to Help Wire the Wireless Office

One cool trick we learned here in the last year centers around wireless technology.  Here is the problem we would often face.

Copier gets sent to a smaller office that uses WiFi in the office and there are not enough ports in the back of the router and therefore, the copier cannot plug into the router.

Situation 2 would be the office was wired, but the place the client wants to put the copier has no network drops, therefore requiring the copier to be wireless, having a super long cable, or paying an IT company to drop another ethernet line.

Given these common situations, we began to look for an out of the box solution that would work better for us.  Not having enough ports is an easy fix, by getting a 4 port or 8 port switch, that isn’t much of a problem.  The bigger issue happened when it needed to be wireless, and sometimes walls are concrete so the signal is terrible.

What we found were power line network adapters. We used the Netgear Powerline 1000 and the Netgear Powerline 1200 – the difference being the 1200 has a plug on the back side of the device so you don’t lose a power outlet. Other brands are out there too, like the TP-Link AV500

Here is one on Amazon for like $30  – Going up in price certainly does not hurt as it will improve speed.  The basics of this adapter is it uses the copper in your building’s power lines in lieu of an actual network cable.  Doing it this way, the device is connected and there is a connection between the router and the copier, even if it is across the building or room. We love how this technology makes it so any copier can be made wireless when connected to the router or put on the network if plugged into a network switch.  We have tried this technology out ourselves and it made setting up copiers much easier than using manufacturer WiFi network connectivity kits.

If you would like to get a copier for your office, please give us a call today!