I found out my Asus motherboard has 2 lan ports.
Now I need to figure out how to configure it thru win7.
This is easy:
1. Type "View Network" into you search bar and choose "View Network Connections" (or go the long way through Control Panel).
2. Right-Click the newly used connection (probably will say something about unidentified network if you have it connected to the printer), and choose "Properties".
3. Double-click Internet Protocol V4 (TCP-IP V4) in the list. I would recommend setting the IP address to 10.0.0.10 and the Subnet Mask to 255.0.0.0 in most cases. The rest can be left blank. Click OK.
4. Change the IP address on your printer. This can usually be done though the menu. Being that there are so many different printers, I am going to leave this up to you, but if you are not sure, check your manual. Change the IP address on the printer to 10.0.0.20 and the Subnet Mask to 255.0.0.0 and the rest of the setting can usually be left blank. Save the settings.
Make notes of the IP addresses for future reference and troubleshooting. Also, change IP address settings in your RIP software as needed.
You should be all set.
NOTE: I use the 10.0.0.x Subnet in order to keep the printer traffic completely separate from most private network ranges. The majority of private networks are on the 192.168.x.x and you don't want your RIP computer getting confused about where to send the printer data. Basically, you don't want your RIP computer trying to send the print job out to the wrong network (or the Internet). You can use other private IP ranges, but I find the 10.0.0.x to work fine in most cases.
