Printing Issue 1

[Gloryhound]

What I am trying to do is this.. VPN and log onto my work computer from home using remote desktop utility built into windows xp pro.. and adding my home printer to my work computer's printers, so that I can print my work off right at home while remoted in.

Seems like a very simple process, however for some reason I cannot see my home computer from work at all on the LAN, yet I can remote in and connect via vpn. I can ping work from home but work for some reason can't ping me back, yet I can ping anywhere else from work. It's as if all outbound traffic from work is blocked.

connection follows like this.

HOME -> win2003 server -> workstation.

I use VPN to connect to the win2003 server and then Remote into the server and then remote into the workstation. I have been able to remote directly to the workstation, I'm sure these two problems have the same cause. Even so I cannot add the home printer even from the server.

Thanks in advance from your friendly neighbourhood VPN rookie!

 

[Gloryhound]

Do I need to connect to the Router that the Server connects through? Do I need a specifically VPN capable router? or will simply passing through the connection to the server allow unrestricted access to the LAN?

 

[dberg35]

The reason your not seeing your pc in the network is it may not be joined to the domain...providing you have one. What you can do is on your pc start IIS services so that your printer can be accesed from the internet example (

http://25.151.222.145/printers).

This way you can creat it through a local port on your office pc. The draw back here though is when you home IP changes the printer work work and you will have to add it again.

 

[Gloryhound]

bump! Hey Dberg, thanks, but the link you provided doesn't work. \

Also if anyone has a more permanent solution.....

 

[dberg35]

That wasn't ment to be a link but an example of printing through the internet.

 

[Gloryhound]

Doh! lol wow.. you'd think it was monday.. Sorry dberg35

 

[John Lewis]

This looks like a routing problem to me.

Reading between the lines, I think the following apply to your situation:

1) Your VPN server is behind a router that is handling NAT for your network.
2) Your router is properly configured to route VPN traffic to your VPN server and you are able to make the VPN connection.
3) Your VPN server is configured to provide the VPN client with an IP address within the range of the LAN subnet. (Example: Your LAN uses 192.168.5.xx addresses, your VPN client is assigned 192.168.5.xx as well)


Under these circumstances, there is no route from your LAN to your VPN client. Because the addresses are within the same subnet, there normally would not be a need for routing. If you VPN server were your router as well, it would generally be taken care of by default as the VPN server would be receiving all traffic to get routed and sort things out.

A couple of solutions. First, you could use your VPN server as your router. This is probably the cleanest solution. It would result in a bit more overhead for that machine, depending upon the amount of traffic your network generates.

The second solution is probably more technically correct and would not generate any additional traffic for the server, but it is a bit more difficult. Under this plan, you would need to change the IP addresses allocated to the VPN connection to something in a different subnet. Add a static route to your router pointing traffic for the VPN subnet back to the VPN server. The real issue with this is that the default routing on your VPN client will no longer be sufficient. You will need to add a route to your LAN through the VPN server.