Let me explain my desired setup and then post a few questions about how to best approach this from the hardware end.
My network consists of my iMac and my MacBook Air. I have a Drobo and laser printer printer I would like to hook up to my network, so they're available to the Air and other computers that happen on to my network. Both of these are currently connected to my iMac. I also have a 500GB MyBook drive that the iMac uses as a Time Machine drive. It is not essential that this is accessible to the rest of the network but it would be nice to lose yet another long USB cable from my setup.
Looking around, no 802.11n routers currently available offer more than one USB port to add a device to. However I found
this MacNN thread from about a year ago claiming the AirPort extreme could support a USB hub and thus more than one device. I am, however, wondering if
Linksys' WRT350N offers this same capability, especially seeing as it's $30 cheaper than the AirPort right now. I have a spare USB hub right now but it's not powered (doesn't have an external power source, just runs off the USB port it's plugged into). All the devices mentioned above that would potentially hook up to the router are powered themselves, so it's not like they need to actually draw power from the USB port to power themselves. I see that the AirPort Exreme supports a USB hub, according to Apple's product page.
I guess that I'm asking if 1) anyone knows if the WRT350N supports USB hubs and 2) am I doing this right? Am I making things too complicated and if so, is there an easier way to apporach this?
Top
