My dad's just bought a new PC which came without a parallel port. He uses a laser printer with no USB, though it does have a network socket. Easy thinks I, I'll use a crossover cable to connect the PC to the printer and set up a second small network to allow the printing (his connection to the internet is via a wireless connection to a router downstairs). When the second network connection is enabled he is unable to connect to the internet (though he can still connect to the router). Clearly I'm missing something, hopefully something simple. Any advice gratefully received. The configuration of the various kit is as follows. Wireless router is 192.168.1.1 Wireless NIC on the PC is 192.168.1.10, default gateway of 192.168.1.1 Wired NIC on the PC is 192.168.2.1, default gateway of 192.168.2.1 Wired NIC on the printer is 192.168.2.2, default gateway of 192.168.2.1 It's not an option to connect the printer directly to the router by the way, he needs it by the PC upstairs.

Hi there, I'm assuming that your two networks both have a /24 prefix ( i.e. subnet mask of 255.255.255.0 ) ? The default gateway applies to the whole TCP/IP stack, not just a single network interface. The default gateway function basically means "if I don't have a any route to the destination ip address requested, send it to this IP address for routing onwards". Your routing table ( open up command prompt and do a "route print" command ) should show you have a directly connected route to the 192.168.2.0 network via your wired interface IP address and therefore you don't need to set a default gateway IP address for that interface. So, your problem is most likely because you are setting a default gateway address on the Wired interface IP settings and it is overriding the correct default gateway IP address which presumably should be the IP address of the wireless router ( 192.168.1.1 ). Change the default gateway IP address to point to your router and leave everything else as it is. Give that a go and let us know how you get on. Cheers, Lofty.

Hi Lofty, thanks for the reply. Subnet mask is indeed 255.255.255.0. I'll remove the gateway address from the wired interface tonight and will report back as soon as I've changed it.

Make that lan a 10.x.x.x number.

I never did let you know how things worked out did I? Very rude of me! I removed the gateway address from the wired network and all worked well. Thanks for your help.

Hey Winkles - good to hear all is well! Cheers, Lofty.