Home Network, and printer sharing.

[BadNewsBears]

Ok heres the situation. I have a two story house. Just built, in is I had the lower office and upper office conn with cat 5 cable. I got in on a hot deal at BB B&M for a router (belkin??) . I have Road Runner now. I want to run the cable modem into the router(in lower office)to lower office pc, then the router to upper office pc. Can I share printers doing this? Also does it soundcorrect.

 

[slowbutsure]

You can share printers through the downstairs computer thru the network. You have to set up the upstairs computer to share the printer- check your printer documentation as to how to set this up. The other way is if your router has a print server built into it. Then all you have to do is instal the printer on each computer and print to the print server.

By the way, if you use the first method , both computers will have to be on to print from the second computer. With the print server method, only the computer you are using has to be on.

I personally have a SMC Barricade router witch has a print server built in, very nice since I have three computers sharing the printer.

 

[858diver]

If you choose to go the print server route, be sure that the printer is supported. I have recently learned the hard way that this is not a trivial issue.

In the end, sharing a printer connected to a computer is much easier, although the computer must be on fr other workstations to access it.

 

[cipher00]

More to what 858diver said: make sure your printer can be supported by any print server, if that's the route you go. Most 4-in-1 printers (multifunction jobs) can't be supported over LAN print servers, though this is not usually a big deal.