A data point: The Canon MF4880dw -- a multifunction device with network and USB interfaces -- has two buttons, labelled Scan->PC1 and Scan->PC2, which seem as if they could be of interest to sane. When I attempt to configure one of those buttons using the front panel, selecting "Network connection" (rather than "Off" or "USB connection") displays "Connect computer" for a couple of seconds before redisplaying the Off/USB/Network selection screen. (Interestingly, selecting "USB connection" does not require anything to be connected to the scanner's USB interface.)
I haven't tried to figure out how the scanner determines that a computer is connected. There are in fact several computers on the network, but none running any Canon software, which leads me to suspect that -- before configuring the Scan->PC# buttons -- the computer(s) to be used as destination(s) would need to be set up. (I had hoped that the front panel configuration menus would allow an IP address and port number to be set for each of the buttons.)
