Others have answered the question well, just wanted to add a personal note:
We have a local "off-IT" printer (prints double-sided 11x17 in color - don't want everyone to use).
All of the engineering and maintenance have direct-connected to the printer for use in printing or scanning - they connect via our department wireless network which the printer is on, so as everyone has mentioned above, you can have multiple computers connected via direct connect. On the very rare occasions that multiple print jobs are started simultaneously, the printer queues the jobs nicely.
Some of the non-department folks wanted to use it as well, so we have our managers machine act as a print server, handling rights, time restrictions, etc. This limits access while keeping the machine active for everyone, and keeps the machine "off-IT", so we can get around the restrictions on which printers are allowed, and keep IT happy - they have no responsibility for the machine, so it doesn't have to follow the standard.
So you can actually do both direct connect and have a print server on the same printer.
Hope this helps others.
2You need not have a host to share a network printer. It does your job by making it accessible by the other devices in the same network. And if you have a web interface, you can manage its properties. – Lakshminarayanan Guptha – 2014-05-20T13:17:11.953