Wireless Home Networking - Index of

Chapter 10: Putting Your Wireless Home Network to Work
Note also that the wizard allows you to browse your network to find the
printer you want to install. Simply click the plus sign next to the computer
that has the printer attached, and you should see the printer below the computer.
(If not, recheck that printer sharing is enabled on that computer.)
At the end of the wizard screens, you have the option to print a test page. We
recommend that you do this. You don’t want to wait until your child has to
have a color printout for her science experiment (naturally, she waits until 10
minutes before the bus arrives to tell you!) to find out that the printer doesn’t
work.
Accessing your shared printers
After you have the printers installed, how do you access them? Whenever
your Print window comes up (by pressing Ctrl+P in most applications), you
see a field labeled Name for the name of the printer accompanied by a pulldown
menu of printer options. Use your mouse to select any printer — local
or networked — and the rest of the printing process remains the same as
though you had a printer directly plugged into your PC.
You can even make a networked printer the default printer by right-clicking
the printer and then choosing Set As Default Printer from the pop-up menu
that appears.
Sharing other peripherals
Sharing any other peripheral is similar to sharing printers. You need to make
sure that you’re sharing the device on the computer it’s attached to. Then you
need to install that device on another PC by using that device’s installation procedures.
Obviously, we can’t be specific about such an installation because of
the widely varying processes that companies use to install devices. Most of the
time — like with a printer — you need to install the drivers for the device
you’re sharing on your other computers.
Note that some of the devices you attach to your network have integrated
Web servers in them. This is getting more and more common. Danny’s
AudioReQuest (www.request.com) music server, for example, is visible on his
home network and is addressable by any of his PCs. Thus, he can download
music to and from the AudioReQuest server and sync it to other devices he
wants music on. Anyone else in the home can do the same — even remotely,
over the Internet. We talk more about the AudioReQuest system in Chapter 12.
Danny has also set up a virtual CD server in his home to manage all the CDs
his kids have for their games. This server is shared on the home network. By
using Virtual CD software from H+H Zentrum fuer Rechnerkommunikation
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