Dummies, Wireless

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Part IV: Using a Wireless Network
The same is true about many peripherals: business card scanners, backup
drives (such as USB hard drives and NAS — network attached storage —
boxes), and even cameras. If you have one device and it’s network enabled,
anyone on the wireless network should be able to access that for the task at
hand.
Setting up a print server
The most common shared peripheral is a printer. Setting up a printer for
sharing is easy, and using it is even easier.
You may have several printers in your house, and different devices may have
different printers — but they all can be shared. You may have the color laser
printer on your machine, a less expensive one (with less expensive consumables
such as printer cartridges, too) for the kid’s computer, and a highquality
photo printer maybe near the TV set plugged into a USB port of a
networkable A/V device. Each of these can be used by a local device — if it’s
properly set up.
Here are the steps you need to take to share a printer:
1. Enable printer sharing in the operating system of the computer to which
the printer is attached.
2. Set up sharing for the installed printer. We say installed printer because
we assume that you’ve already installed the printer locally on your computer
or other device.
3. Remotely install the printer on every other computer on the network.
We describe remote installation in the aptly named section “Remotely
installing the printer on all network PCs,” later in this chapter.
4. Access the printer from any PC on the network!
Throughout the rest of this section, we go through these four general steps in
much more detail.
Sharing your printer in Windows XP
Windows Vista and Windows XP are more sophisticated than previous
Windows operating systems and subsequently have a server type of print
sharing. In other words, they offer all the features of a big network with
servers on your local machine. These features include the ability to assign
users to manage the print queue remotely, embed printer software for easier
installation, and manage when the printer is available based on a schedule
you define.