This article explains how you can connect a printer to a home network. Printers come with parallel, USB or network ports. Unless you buy a network printer , most printers are parallel or USB printers and do not have a network port. This article understands the components required to setup a parallel or USB printers on a network.
As the printers do not have a network port, the parallel or USB printers needs to be converted to a network printer. For this, a parallel port or USB port print server needs to be purchased. These device have a parallel port or USB port as well as a network port, which would make the respective ports into network ports and correspondingly the printer a network printer.
Connect the printer to a print server as shown in the below diagram.
Assign an IP address for the network printer from the LAN IP address range.
The print server is a configurable device, where the IP address of the printer is provided. Configure the print server with the IP address which is assigned to the printer. Connect the network port on the print server to the LAN switch as shown in the above diagram.
Configure the IP address of the printer in the printer properties of the individual PC’s on the network.