Home Network to share a Printer

[PeteAtoms]

I need help in sharing a printer between three computers. Here is the setup:

All three computers are XP's.

The way we are all connected is complicated. We have a phoneline that connects to a 2Wire HomePortal 1000HW. This 2Wire has a spot for one ethernet cable and a USB cable. We hook our main computer (the one with the printer) into the 2Wire with a USB cable.

We have two more computers, but only one spot in the 2Wire Portal for Internet, so we got a Linksys BEFSR41 Router which we hooked to the 2Wire with an ethernet cable.

This Linksys Router has four slots for hooking things up to the internet. We use these slots for our two other computers (and occasionally another laptop).

We never set up a home network, I don't know how to and I never bothered because we all managed to get onto the internet just fine (as far as I can remember).

Here is a crude diagram of the setup:

Spoiler :

So the printer is hooked up to PC 1 via USB. My question, is how can I set up the computers to all share the same printer?

EDIT: While making the diagram I can see that simplifying the router/homeportal thing would make things easier, but I'm on a tight budget. And tried looking through the pages at the Microsoft website, but those are no help at all.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

If your printer is network enabled ( It can exist as its own entity on the network and can be headless ) then the best thing I suggest is getting a network switch and hooking it up as such: (will involve a bit of reorganizing your network, but a well organized one helps when you need to add stuff )

You can adjust how many PC's are sitting on the switch according to what you want.
Personally, I have this setup at home:

As you can see, having a switch made it easy to add additional devices ( I actually have the PC1 and Printer on a second switch because the number of devices connected in my room alone is quite a few -- but thats largely irrelevant here )

 

[PeteAtoms]

Thank you for the detailed response I might look into getting a switch. I googled "network switch," but it seems like a switch is the same thing as a router...

And how can I tell if my printer is network enabled?

 

[croxis]

However most people don't have headless printers.

So with ASCII art (ignore the periods, theya re to preserve the formatting):

Wall
|
|----|2 wire|---|Linksys|---|PC1|----|printer|
|..........................|\
...........................| \----|PC2|
.................... |PC3|

All wires are Ethernet except the phoneline from the wall to the 2wire.

It is generally not a good idea to use USB for computer networking, especially if you do online gaming. USB, due to its design, has high latency.

To use the common definitions for the terms: A router is a switch plus additional networking tools like firewall, port forwarding, and is its own entity on the network. A switch is, as far as the computer is concerned, a transparent device which allows any computer hooked into the switch to see each other.

 

[Cutlass]

As they say, all of the computers should be hitched to the router by ethernet cables. And then as you do not say the printer is ethernat capable, it has to be hitched to a computer, rather than to the router. So the computer with the printer has to be running to use the printer. The go to the Control Panel on each Windows computer and use the Network Setup Wizard. That will "introduce" each computer to the others. You may have to allow "File and Print Sharing" separately. And if you have a firewall active on the computers themselves, you may have to allow the computers on your network specifically.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

What is your printer model? We may be able to help you more if we know whether or not it can be headless.

EDIT - for the network switch, you're only gonna need a small 4/5 port and I doubt you'd need GigE on it (1000mb/s). You can find switches like this for something like 20$ -30$ online: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122005