Printing remotely to a network printer over Internet

[Rick]

I have a network laser printer on my LAN I'd like to access from a remote computer (WAN). The goal here is to print documents on my laser printer at home from a remote location not connected to my LAN.

Any ideas on what is the best way to do this? I have a fair amount of networking experience, but no experience with VPN/WAN networking.

Some extra info:

I have a static DNS so I can pinpoint my computer remotely.

I have a router with 3 computers and the network printer

I have PCAnywhere 11 and Windows XP on the computers involved with this project.

 

[Nodsu]

Is it a HP printer? JetDirect is a network protocol like any other so you could get away with forwarding appropriate ports to the printer in your firewall. I think the JetDirect printing port was 9100, but you should read up on that.

 

[Rick]

Thanks for the reply.

I just figured out how to do something usable through VPN.

I am not able to print directly to the printer though (This would be ideal). Rather, the printer is shared on my computer connected to the LAN.

The laptop on WAN connects through VPN to my LAN (through default VPN port opened on my firewall) and I print using my printer shared through the network.

I am unable to print by directly using the printer's IP though, which I think is strange. I'm using the TCP/IP protocol however.

I will try the JetDirect and perhaps I can print directly to the printer itself through IP address, rather than bounce it from a LAN computer as a network share.

 

[Nodsu]

BTW opening your printer to the world by opening a port in the firewall would be silly.

But if you can get JD working through your VPN then it should be OK.

And of course there is SSH tunneling..