Lexmark Pinnacle Pro901 - printing over the internet

[goombawaho]

I saw somebody that had one of these printers. It was set up on his router as the DMZ host and thus completely open to the internet. As the DMZPlus host, it was also sharing the public IP address of the 2Wire router and publicly addressable.

The user said they could print to it over the internet, but I don't see anything about that in the manual.

The other interesting thing: I power-cycled the DSL router and got a new IP address, but the user's PC was still able to find the printer at the NEW public IP address.

Any ideas as how that might work?

 

[rclarke250]

Something like this

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb490831.aspx,

there are other free ware ways of doing it also. And ways to do it within home server as long as you install IIS manager and the internet printing module.

This is not a product of the printer itself, this can be done with any printer that has a network print server. Either added, or built-in. And also doesn't need to be in the DMZ, unless that is needed by the software.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Printing_Protocol

for more info.

And as long as the printer is using a nickname on the network, the driver will find it, that is in the manual, under setting up network printing.

 

[goombawaho]

Well, this guy wouldn't have done anything fancy, only what would have come with the printer. He's a basic user. I'm really confused.

The printer in Windows 7 (when I went into properties of the printer), showed the new external ip address. The same new one as shown by the Network Summary page I printed.

I printed a "before" network summary page and then I did some changes and then printed an "after", so I know the IP address changed but the laptop was able to figure it out.

Is it possibly because it was on the internal LAN when the IP address changed and the laptop was able to sense that?? Because if the laptop was off site, there's no possible way it could have sniffed out the printer IP address change.

 

[rclarke250]

The printer driver by default gives the printer a default name, and when network printing, it searches the network, by MAC address, and associates the printer driver with the found IP address. Only way it would work in a DHCP environment, and to take the headache out of the average user, who doesn't know enough to set up static IP's.

Also saw your post in the linksys forum, Don't know about the 2 wire router, but my D-Link has a guest zone I can set up for wireless, so if someone comes over they have access to the internet, but not my network. It sets up a vpn for the guest zone wireless. And will allow or block access for cross zone access. Look at the DIR-655, or DIR-615.

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah, the printer is DHCP, but it's just pulling a public IP address from the 2Wire router because it's the DMZ Plus host.

I'm thinking that's what happened - the laptop is on the network with the printer while it's at the office and can sniff out whatever IP address the printer happens to get (public/private doesn't matter). Then it could still print when off site if the laptop has the correct external IP.

But the question remains as to how it actually prints across the internet because the printer doesn't mention anything about "web printing". Normally that's something that the manufacturer would crow about.

I wonder if it's simply addressable like HP printers are at a port (9100) if open.