network printer with an IP address

[Jevan]

1. A network printer (has an IP address and website), would I assign it
a gateway of our router or of our windows 2003 server computer. I've set
it to our router (if that sounds OK?).

2. I've given it a fixed IP address on our subnet. The router does DHCP.
So I've set the router to reserve the IP address of the network printer.
This doesn't "seem" necessary except perhaps to ensure the router
doesn't try and allocate the fixed IP address of our printer (though
presumably it would check anyway by sending out a test packet or ping or
something, before allocating it?).

 

[Richard G. Harper]

Both are proper practice. You do need to make a DHCP reservation for the
printer to keep some other device from poaching its address, since DHCP does
not test an address to see if it's in use before assigning it. If it has
assigned the address or sees a reservation then it knows the address is in
use, otherwise it will happily assign it as needed even though the printer
is already on that address.

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Richard G. Harper [MVP Shell/User] (e-mail address removed)
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1. A network printer (has an IP address and website), would I assign it
a gateway of our router or of our windows 2003 server computer. I've set
it to our router (if that sounds OK?).

2. I've given it a fixed IP address on our subnet. The router does DHCP.
So I've set the router to reserve the IP address of the network printer.
This doesn't "seem" necessary except perhaps to ensure the router
doesn't try and allocate the fixed IP address of our printer (though
presumably it would check anyway by sending out a test packet or ping or
something, before allocating it?).