You could connect printers, storage units, media servers… A world of possibilities!
Grab your router right now and look behind, where they are all ethernet ports. If you see a USB port and you didn’t know it was there, this article interests you so much that you should drop everything you’re doing (unless it involves neglecting a fire, of course). You will see, that your pileup is used for much more than for give internet to the whole house and your neighbor.
Make sure your router is compatible
Before you start connecting things to your router, you should know that even if it has a USB input, it won’t always fully support all the features that we’re going to talk about a bit further down; it all depends on what the peripheral manufacturer has decided make compatible. Keep in mind that some of the devices you want to use need more power than your provider’s router provided.
Another possibility is that, indeed, it is capable of giving it chicha but that the manufacturer disable certain compatibilities artificially to distinguish products from different ranges. We refer to the installed firmwareof course, and in those cases it is possible to apply a custom one such as DD-WRT or Tomato, but by doing so you can end up without a router unless you inform yourself well.
On the other hand, if you have already confirmed that your peripheral is compatible and have the correct firmware, you may need to access your model’s software to enable USB features. Everyone is different, so again, you may need to access the setup program so that each “clunker” is properly detected.
Surprise functions of your USB Router
Centralize your printer
The Internet-enabled printers (Ethernet cable or Wi-Fi) are neither expensive nor difficult to find, but if it turns out that the one you have is old and only has USB outputby connecting it to your router you can turn it into a printer-server to which any computer in the same network can access. We know that Windows makes it quite easy to connect these peripherals to a network to achieve exactly the same thing, but the difference is that through the router you don’t have to keep the computer connected.
Connect a storage drive
Ok, the best way to share a storage unit with an entire network, be it your home or your trusted educational center, is connecting a NASbut if the number of clients is modest, why not use a flash drive directly? It may be much simpler than you think, because within the menu of your router you should find various sharing options.
Build a media server
Some routers offer the ability to act as a media server that can be accessed by devices and apps like Plex to play content. How well it works will depend on the speed of your processors, but depending on the quality and weight of the content you want to playit can come in handy.
Connect to a mobile network
Your router, basically, connects to the network using cable or fiber, but sometimes these technologies are not fully operational 100% of the time. If you can’t afford to lose the internet because you work from home and have to attend meetings that could have been solved with an email, consider connecting a mobile antenna to it. Compatible peripherals are rarer, but the setup process It is usually very simple through the default software.
Backup your files
Obviously, when you have connected some reliable storage unit, something you should ask yourself is make your backups there, both from the system and from your files. You can directly use the native Windows tool, or use more powerful and open third-party programs.
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