Dedicated NIC for Printer

The questions keep coming...

I appreciate you guys helping me out with all these issues. So thanks.

After doing some reading, I came across an article mentioning that SBS 2003's network setup wizard can't run if you have three NIC's installed on the server. It's only meant for up to two.

Now. This company has a wide format printer which connects via a Cat5 cable to the computer using it. Therefore it needs a network card. I was planning on installing this onto the server, but I don't want to affect the setup. The server has two NICS for the network, and will have one extra for this printer. This extra one will simply be dedicated to the printer, so will it be an issue? Or should I install it post network setup wizard?

Thanks.

I don't understand. If the printer has a NIC then it has an IP address, therefore shouldn't you be able to just plug it into your hub/router and then be able to access it from every computer on the network? Why do you want to plug it directly into a computer?

Well I don't necessarily have to I suppose. The server is going to be handling all the printing however since the program processes very large graphic files. I just figured I may as well plug it in to the Server since that is the only box which will be printing.

Three NICS in one machine running Microsoft Windows. Now to me, that is just asking for trouble and many headaches to come.

The simpler you keep your network, the easier problems will be to diagnose if and when you have problems.

Well, if you're using SBS2003, what is the purpose of having two NIC's on the server in the first place? NIC1 will service the network. What is NIC2 doing? Using a server to share DSL/Cable is overkill. Unless you're doing some kind of load-balancing, just use NIC2 for the printer.

Everything I have read has said that you should always use two NICs for a SBS setup. One external which is connected to the modem and one internal which connects to the network. Everyone seems to agree that the 1 NIC method creates far more headaches during setup. I should mention that I am managing the domain through this server, as I think that was part of the rationale for the easier setup with two NICs.