I help at a computer club. We have two ADSL lines each with a 4-port router. Each router has 3 PCs connected to it. We have a printer on one of the router networks shared with its 3 PCs. Is there a way of sharing the printer with all 6 PCs. If the routers were just ethernet hubs, I believe sharing could be achieved by connecting the hubs together with a cross over cable. However these are ADSL routers each providing a connection to the Internet. What is the best solution to the probem? Thanks in anticipation.

You are on the right track using a crossover cable to connect the two networks physically. That is router1 lan port to router2 lan port. The next step is ip addressing. You can't use dhcp. You must do everything with static assignments within the same subnet. So hosts off router1 get ips like so: router1 192.168.1.1 router1 host1 192.168.1.2 router1 host2 192.168.1.3 etc all with gateway 192.168.1.1 Whereas router2 has router2 192.168.1.101 router2 host1 192.168.1.102 router2 host2 192.168.1.103 etc all with gateway 192.168.1.101

In my Netgear DG834 routers I can specify the start and end of the LAN address range. I have assumed this means I don't need to turn off DHCP in either unit, is this correct? Thanks

I clearly don't fully understand how all this works. By static assignment, do you mean address reservation? (in Netgear terms) I would appreciate some clarification. Thanks in anticipation. Geoff

we are talking 6 pcs right? You will spend more time configuring ip reservations than you will going to each pc and manually putting in a ip address and gateway entry. Now if you want to keep dhcp on both you need to do ip reservations. Without doing so a host under router2 can get its ip AND GATEWAY from router1. Understand?

I partly understand. I think this is what you are telling me to do. 1. Change the LAN address range in router 2. 2. Switch off DHCP in both routers. 3.Manually set up the IP address and gateway in each pc. I will probably understand better when I try it out. What happens to the internet traffic? Will requests from hosts on router 1 be served by ADSL line 1, and requests from hosts on router 2 be served by ADSL line 2? I look forward to hearing from you again. Thanks from Geoff, Manchester UK

1. Change the LAN address range in router 2. no you only change ITS address which is the gateway address. 2. Switch off DHCP in both routers. yes 3.Manually set up the IP address and gateway in each pc. yes Will requests from hosts on router 1 be served byADSL line 1, and requests from hosts on router 2 be served by ADSL line 2? yes if you follow the ip addressing plan I made for you. each pc will only use the router that is associated with its gateway entry. You don't want internet traffic going over the crossover cable as that will slow down your shared printer access.