Hello,

I am new to networking, and I have a Brother HL-5170DNLT, which is a networkable printer.

I would like to network it with my 3 home office computers, and could use some advice.

At this point, I cannot get the computers to see each other – not a great start, I know. Can you perhaps help out there…?

The user profiles do not have passwords. Must they have them to enable networking with one another? All users have full admin privileges.

I have:

· 2 XP SP2 laptops (1 XP Pro and 1 XP Home) and 1 Vista Home Premium laptop
· A wireless router (D-Link) with 4 Ethernet ports.

All computers can see the router, but not each other. They are currently all set up with software and drivers to print individually to the printer via a USB cable that I keep switching from one to the other.

What I want to do:

· Use all 3 laptops wirelessly, and connect the printer to the router via Ethernet, so that it is separate from all the computers, and not hosted by any particular unit.

It seems like the printer would not have to be connected to a print server, since it has a server built into it, but again, I’m not sure…

Can I do this? If so, how?

Do I have to install the software differently, as for networking, and give the printer an IP address, etc? How do I do all this?

And how do I get the router to see the printer initially?

If you can give me the answers, I’ll be eternally grateful.
I have seen this FAQ page on the Brother site,

http://www.brother-usa.com/askus/FAQSoluti...;ProductGroup=1

but it looks like a setup in which other computers print through one hosting computer. Is there a fully wireless way I’m not seeing?

Thank you very much for what help you can give to a newbie!

Tony