11/30 Trouble on the HAN

I am trying to get my home network to be more cooperative about sharing files and printers. When I connect my work laptop via VPN to my corporate network, I lose connnectivity to my home printer.

I have tried activating the secondary network cards in the two machines and I get link lights but they won't talk to each other using the secondary interfaces. I've tried

route add 192.168.A.0 netmask 255.255.255.0 192.168.A.1 metric 1 IF 2

but this either does not work or takes out my ability to connect to the internet on the wireless NIC. No, I am not typing A.0 but I am paranoid and don't want to post my network specifics here too much. Secretive and technically stumped - the recipe for late nights at the keyboard.

Been reading a few posts about being a better IT person and I think networking might be something I should learn more about. At least so I can print.