The only constant with my home network is I’m always changing it. The latest change - we consolidated two offices into one, in order to make room for a baby in December (I considered creating a dual nursery/office space, but that idea got quashed rather quickly).

To accommodate the nursery, my wife’s office had to merge with mine, which meant adding another desktop PC and a printer (a Canon S750 inkjet printer) to the existing network. Adding the PC was no problem, especially since I had a Linksys 8-port 10/100 Ethernet workgroup switch that had more than enough available ports. My wife’s previously wireless-enabled desktop PC was now connected via Ethernet, which also reduced the future number of help desk calls that I’d get (wireless and Windows XP has a funny way of occasionally not working together).

Her printer connected to her PC via the regular serial cable, but since it was also a USB printer, I began thinking I could take advantage of having it closer to the wired network. My own desktop printer, an older HP 995c, was having some ink problems that I didn’t feel like tackling (printing a black page gave me magenta as an unwanted bonus). By putting the Canon printer on the network, I could give printer access to all PCs on the network (the two wired PCs, my occasionally wired work PCs and all wireless devices).

Luckily, I had a Keyspan 4-port Print Server (Model PS-4A, about $80 to $115, available at online retailers) sitting around the office ready to be opened and tested. I’ll admit that using a device that allows for four USB printers to be connected to a wired network may be a bit overkill, but there are two reasons I chose this. First, it was readily available for me to try out. Second, I always like planning for the future, and I don’t doubt that I will have need for four different printers at some point.

The Keyspan device connected easily to my network using the provided quick start guide (steps involved connecting to an open Ethernet port, powering up, installing software on my PC and then connecting via USB cable to the printer). Since my desktop PC didn’t have the Canon print drivers, I also needed to download them from the Canon Web site. After installing the Keyspan print utility and installing drivers, I could do a “virtual connect” to the Canon printer and print away. Amazingly (because I often break things unintentionally), everything worked perfectly the first time around.