One of the reasons many home network builders go through the expense and effort in the first place is to share a printer. If someone splurges several hundred to several thousand dollars for a color laser printer, they don't want to shell out that money for each computer in the home. Fortunately, sharing a printer in a Windows-based home network is easy. It isn't much more difficult in Linux.

There are two related steps: setting up hardware and configuring software.

Whether wireless or cabled, the hardware connections need to be established first.

The hardware set up is generally very straightforward. There are two ways to go about it. Either the printer is attached locally to one computer on the network, or it has a NIC (a network interface card, an adapter) of its own.

In the second case, the printer plugs into the network just as a computer does. It gets an IP address just as any computer on the network does. In the first case, the printer doesn't require a separate IP address since it's accessed via the computer to which it is locally attached.

Next, the software configuration has to be done.

First, for a network attached printer, it will need to be assigned an IP address. Select one in the range associated with your home network. For example, suppose your main computer or router is 192.168.0.1 and you have two other computers on the network Jack/192.168.0.2 and Jill/192.168.0.3.

You could select then the next available IP address, 192.168.0.4 or skip a few to allow extra numbers for more computers. It doesn't matter, since all IP addresses are equal, provided they're in the proper range and don't start with the gateway address, 192.168.0.1.

The specifics of how to assign the IP address vary from printer to printer. Consult the manual. Just ensure that you don't accidentally assign the same IP address twice on your network. That will invariably cause problems since the router and other systems won't be able to correctly direct traffic on the network.

The following instructions may vary slightly depending on which Windows version you are using. For a locally attached printer, all it needs is a name. Use Control Panel/Printers. Select the printer you want to share. Then, in the tasks pane, click Share This Printer. Open the Properties dialog box and click on the Sharing tab. Enter a name and click OK. The printer is now shared.

Now that you have a network printer, you can connect to it from all computers on the network. To add a network printer to your computer, use Control Panel/Printers again. Click in the tasks pane Add a Printer. Instead of adding a local printer choose for network printer and browse the network for the right printer.

Be sure to place the printer in some appropriate location. You may want to hide it in a closet to reduce noise, or put it in a hallway for easy access around the house. Or, you may want to centralize your printer, fax, scanner in the home office. The physical location makes no difference to the network hardware or software, only the IP address and/or name is important.