Ethernet and wifi question

Good afternoon,
I have a PC that I built in 2018. I did not install a PCIe wifi card, because I am running on AT&T Fiber. That being said, I disabled the wifi on my modem and only use ethernet on my PC. I disabled the modem wifi because I needed a mesh system to alleviate any wifi drop-outs or weak wifi. The mesh system provides wifi to all of my other devices.
My issue right now is that my printer is wired into my Fiber modem, so I cannot print from anything except my PC. If I install a PCIe wifi card, will there be any conflict with my PC in regards to internet service? I'm trying to visualize any scenarios that might be conflicted.
I don't want to seem ignorant in this issue, so if anyone can help me, that would be great.

If the printer is plugged into the modem (assuming it has a built-in switch) then the printer should have an IP address in which case anything on your network should be able to connect to it and use it.

To put it plainly, Any device, computer or printer, connected to the same network either wired or wirelessly, can "TALK" to each other.

The issue is that my wireless mesh network is NOT the same network as my Ethernet network. This is why I'm asking if I can install a Wifi adapter on my PC so that I can connect with my mesh network AND use my ethernet network on the PC also.

I'll just throw this out as Copilot helped me connect to my modem which had an IP address (192.168.100.1) out of the ASUS router's IP range (192.168.50.1). Does Mesh have a "static route" availability? Here is what Copilot helped me with:

• 1. Log into your ASUS router at 192.168.50.1.
  2. Go to LAN → Route → Static Route.
  3. Add a new entry:
     • Network/Host IP: 192.168.100.1
     • Netmask: 255.255.255.255
     • Gateway: 0.0.0.0 (or leave blank if allowed)
     • Metric: 1
     • Interface: WAN
  4. Save and reboot the router.
  5. Test by browsing to http://192.168.100.1.

Copilot exlained:

The key change: use 255.255.255.255 as the mask and point the route to the WAN interface, not the LAN IP. That should restore access to your modem’s status page.


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I don't know if any of this will help your situation but I thought I'd share anyway.
Much success to you.
John

Yes, you can do that. If your PC is connected to 2 networks, it will connect to only one network at a time depending the metrics you set. However, Your PC may experience conflict if it doesn't know which connection to prioritze in any particular case.
If you want traffic for the Internet to go through one network, while local traffic (like to shared drives or printers) to use the other, your other shared devices would need to use the same network as the printer, Since you have a mesh network, I am guessing they are. Sounds like your PC is the odd man out.

This is from my handy-dandy networking notes. Hope it works. I've never done it.
If you want:

• One network for Internet
• The other for local access only

Disable the default gateway on the local-only network. (In your case it would be the wireless one).

1. Go to Advanced TCP/IP Settings
2. Uncheck “Automatic metric”
3. Remove the Default gateway field (leave it blank)

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Check Which Network Is Active
To see which interfaces are up and how routing is prioritized, Open Command Prompt and type:

route print
or
ipconfig

Thank you all for that information. I will investigate what I need to do to make this happen.