Posted by Bruno Biancucci on February 24, 2012 at 10:47:07:
In Reply to: Comet AnyWhere printers posted by John Boucher on February 23, 2012 at 10:54:36:
Jeff,
Not a problem, works fine and I've got it setup where multiple locations can print to multiple locations.
Let's lay out the topology first. We've got a CA Host computer that run's the CA sessions on some local or remote computer. CA has a feature (as John mentioned) to allow the local user to jump through a couple of hoops to have their CA session direct output to one local printer (configured in Windows). That works well, but probably not what your looking for?
The short answer is you have to setup all the printers you want access to on the CA Host computer, so that Windows can print to all of these printers. How is this done?
All of the printers need to be a node on the local LAN. They must be connected directly to the network without being tethered to a computer. Just about all printers I have purchased (even the cheap $100 jobs) will have a tcp/ip connection. And if they don't and you have an 'old faith full' with a parallel port, check out d-link print server (about $90), which will convert it to a network printer. Make sure all of the printers at the various locations are setup on the network and make sure they all have a STATIC ip address. Once this is done, setup all of the local computers to print (via TCP/IP) to these printers. This will verify the local configurations are working.
Next, you'll need to get & setup a firewall that has a NAT (network address translation) feature. Personally I like to use a Linux box running either Smoothewall or IpCop. In layman terms, NAT allows you to 'connect' from the outside on a certain port (ie. 9105) and reconnect on the inside to a different port (ie. 9100). Note: all network printers listen in on port 9100. So, if we have 3 printers at a remote location, we could used say port 9101, 9102, 9203 and the firewall would be setup to take a wan connection on these three ports and direct it to an inside IP address (ie. 192.168.0.100:9101, 192.168.0.101:9102 and 192.168.0.103:9103). You would have three forward rules on the firewall to direct traffic to your three printers at that branch.
On the CA host computer, you would have to setup the printers (with their respective printer driver). During the installation of the printer, it asks you for a PORT (typically LP1 or LP2), which is wrong in this case. Click on Configure Port and enter the IP Address or the public URL of the remote location and enter the PORT (ie. 9101). This will instruct the CA host computer to make a tcp/ip connection to your printer via the internet. Yes, way cool! Setup all three (in this example) printers in the same manner. Make sure the CA host pc printers are setup on different ports (ie. 9101, 9102, 9203).
While at the CA Host site, I would test to make sure the remote printer is working in Windows. Simply do a Print Test Page from the CA host computer and you should get the windows test page at the remote location.
In comet.ini file, setup the printer as you would any other printer.
If your remote locations do not have static ip addresses (ie. you have a DHCP setting on your firewall WAN port), you'll need something to monitor the IP changes at the location. I would recommend checking out no-ip.com (the free one will do 5 locations last time I checked) and they have a DNS update program. This application will run as a service on any windows computer at the location being watched. Every few minutes, if the IP address changes, it will automatically update the URL.
The key points to make this configuration work are as follows:
- The printer must be connected to the local area network
- The firewall must do NAT.
If NAT isn't available, you'll only be able to setup 1 printer at the remote location (on port 9100). I have yet to see a printer that allows for port 9100 (on the printer) to be changed.
Each file can be a maximum of 1MB in length Uploaded files will be purged from the server on a regular basis.