Assigning IP address to 2nd NIC

Hello

I'd appreciate some advice on how to configure the following setup.

We have 3 PC's on our domain that need to use a printer that we want to keep off our domain. We have installed 2nd NIC's into each PC and have connected these, and the printer to a switch. How do we configure the 2nd NIC's and the printer so that they are effectivly in a workgroup by themselves whilst the PC remains on the domain via the 1st NIC?

Our thoughts so far are that we assign each NIC and the printer a static IP address in a different subnet to the domain IP address. But what do we use as the gateway? Presumably if our routers don't know about this private 'workgroup' network then only these PC's will be able to use the printer.

Any advice would be gratefully received. thanks for your time

 

Leave the Gateway address blank. As you said, you don't want your routers to know about the printer network nor the printer NICs to know about your main network.

Just to make things easy to keep track of, I'd not only use a different subnet but a totally different address series.

So, for example, if your main network uses 10.x.x.x then use 192.168.x.x for the printer piece.

This does mean that the printer connections will all need to be on one side of any routers you have. Same switch or switches that can 'see' each other directly.

 

Why do you need to isolate this printer from the network at large physically? Can you just do it logically?

I would just configure the printer for some oddball subnet as newt suggested, and then bind a second IP to each of the client machines that need to see it.

If you are afraid someone will discover your ploy and start printing color giffies on your shiney new color laser, you could dual home one machine to switch/printer, set it for ip forwarding/routing and bind second ips to the other 2 clients with a route add for the subnet with the dualhome machine as the gateway.

 

Thanks for your replies

That's confirmed what I thought and given me some more ideas to play with. The reason we want to isolate this printer is because we have found that print jobs take ages to print over the network to this particular printer whereas it just flies over a workgroup / switch.
Cheers!

 

I used to have a 5550 HP printer SHARED. But it was a pain because it required this machine to be on AT ALL TIMES.

But now I have an HP Deskjet 5850 NETWORK Printer plugged directly into the Router.

It is just as fast from any machine because the drivers are installed on each machine and it ( I LOVE THIS ) DOES NOT require any one certain machine to to be on at all times. ALIAS-It is not a SHARED item. It has its' own IP address assigned to it by DHCP. And unless I shut it off that address does not change. It has been 192.168.1.100 since the day it was installed.

Sherpa

I think this would be just what you want. ( or at least something to check into ) And you would not need a 2nd NIC to fight with.

BillyBob

 

Also. Right now the 5850 is networked via the Router to a XP Pro SP2 machine. A 98SE machine and a XP Home machine.

BillyBob