Comments on: Home Printing – Connected to a VPN

By: David

David — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 15:32:32 +0000

Adam,

The issue is not the home network.
We have an office that uses VPN to connect to our corporate office over comcast.
We have local printers on our in-house network. Very small network. One router behind the cable modem with laptop PC’s and printers attached.
The problem is that we cannot print to the local printers when we are on VPN unless I add the route command. This is fine as long as our IP address stays static, but we have dynamic IP’s so we can go to our clients office or home. When we come back to the office our IP could be different again.
Any suggestions?

By: Adam

Adam — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 16:30:40 +0000

David,

That will depend on your office network, of course, but the most likely scenario is that you will just have a route to a private home network that doesn’t work. The issues come in when your home and office networks overlap. Normally that is not the case, as most offices will stay away from 192.168.x.x ranges you usually find on home routers. Your mileage may very of course – if in doubt, just make yourself a little script to add it and another to delete it and put them (or shortcuts to them) on your desktop for easy addition/removal.

Adam

By: David

David — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 15:06:17 +0000

Adam,

If you use the persistent setting, what happens when your IP address changes. Being in an office environment and bringing our laptops home at night and back in the morning the IP has a possibility to change being Dynamic IPs. How would that work?

Thanks,
David

By: Paul

Paul — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 01:42:53 +0000

Thanks! Very handy, and now I don’t have to wait a week for an answer from our help desk.

By: bryan

bryan — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 22:26:10 +0000

Leslie or anyone,
Is there reason or setting that would stop this for working for me. I also have just a printer, not a server, that I need working while on vpn, i type – route add (ip of printer) mask 255.255.255.255 (default gateway of network that the printer is on)
thanks

By: krafty001

krafty001 — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 23:49:53 +0000

I just bought a new router. With the old router, I could print docs from a remote desktop machine I was connected to via a vpn just fine. New Router, couldn’t do it. Your fix saved me. All is well now.
Thanks

By: James

James — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 15:46:48 +0000

Is this the same configuration if you are a remote user with a printer at home, connect to the office via VPN, using the software on the server (in this case SAGE line 50) and then trying to print to the printer right next to you?! The issue I have is that I can ONLY print to the printer on the office network when I am in a VPN session using the software on the server, then I have to get the office to post me the print outs!!!

By: Leslie Horst

Leslie Horst — Sun, 18 Apr 2010 03:52:18 +0000

In my case – home network, Ethernet, networked printer (i.e., no computer is serving as the print server), 3 computers – I have exactly the same problem with printing (i.e., I can’t) when VPN’d to my workplace. How would your procedure be modifed in that case?

By: Mehdi

Mehdi — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 17:51:59 +0000

Dude thank you ever so much. I have spent hours looking for a solution and yours worked like a charm…

By: Sandra

Sandra — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 03:59:15 +0000

Thank you! I was about to toss out the computer because of this persistent trouble when I was trying to print. I’m far from a computer geek, but was able to figure it out with your clear instructions.