How do I set up a wireless home network with a desktop, laptop and printers with a wireless firewall router?

Question

We have a laptop and desktop- both used for business and personal use.
We would like to have a wireless home network, with our printer, so the desktop and the laptop can connect to the same thing, with our printer.
We were thinking something along the lines of two user profiles- one business and one personal- and both computers can connect to each of these profiles, and the files can be sort of 'synchronised' whenever the laptop is in range- incase it has been taken away from home for business use.
We have a wireless firewall router. One of the two printers is wireless (bluetooth) and the laptop is bluetooth, if that makes any difference.
The only problem is we have no real idea how to do this! Is this possible? Mail me with step by step instructions if the answer thing is not sufficient.
Any thing would be a great help!

Answer 1

Hi,

This is not hard to do and is what the router is designed for. You will not beable to use the bluetooth function of the printer though as it is not compatible with WIFI.


To set this up you need to ask yourself a few questions first.
1) Does the desktop need to be wireless, or will it be close to the router so you can use a ethernet cable to connect it?
2) Does your printer need to be wireless? If your desktop will be on at all times you can connect the printer to the desktop as normal and then share it as a network printer.


I am going to just do this like you have nothing and tell you how I would setup this network and you can just cross out the items you dont need.. And I am also going to assume you want to share an internet connection

You first need to purchase:
1) A Wireless Network adapter for the Desktop
2) A WIreless Network adapter for the Laptop
3) A Wireless Router
4) A Wireless Print Server
5) A Broadband Internet Service (Modem Provided by ISP)

Now for the FUN part:
-Cable from wall/phone line to Braodband Modem
-Ethernet Cable from Modem to Router WAN (INTERNET) Port
+Follow the install guide for the router to set it up to connect to your ISP
-After installing Wireless adapters in each computer make sure the internet connection is good on both computers.
-Connect printer to print server
-On each computer make sure they have different names and have the workgroup name exactly the same.
-On each computer run the wireless network wizard and enable file and printer sharing
-Add a network printer. You might need a printer driver disk to load the drivers on each computer.

And thats about it......

Answer 2

Get a good router like the Linksys WRT54G. If you need wireless to both units and don't have it built into the laptop, get wireless USB devices. Connect the printer to the desktop, and do a printer file share in network devices if not already enabled. Set up a small office/home network and print through the desktop from the laptop. After getting it set up go into the wireless security and set up WPA security, change the channel to 11 to avoid interference and change the login password. Write everything on a small piece of paper and tape it to the bottom of the router for future reference. With the MS wallet you can do file updating between the two systems. The help menu will aid in alot of these things and Linksys has a great live chat and phone support.

Answer 3

A wireless Cable/DSL router should be fine. When setting it up you may have to do your first configuration of the router with one of the laptops hooked up with a wire. Additionally you may also have to call your ISP to allow your new router through their firewall, so that you can access the internet.