Remote Printing Management

[mofusjtf]

I have 180 remote offices all with mutliple printers (HP LJ's, Lexmark Dot Matrix, Brother MFC's, etc.) All the remote locations operate in a Peer-to-Peer configurtion. The most common support calls for our computer support department concern printing. Is there a good way to manage printers remotely?

 

[w33mhz]

How are you remote offices connected? If you have point to point connections or vpns you should be able to go the the web page of the printer. The tricky part is if you don't know what the IP addresses are of the printers, you will have to have someone at the sites give you that info or if you have access to view dhcp leases you can sometimes figure it out from there. If the printers are local printers you will need a connection to the machine they are hooked to, i.e. pcanywhere, ultraVNC, RDP, etc. Just so you can remotely get on the console of the machine.

 

[mofusjtf]

Thanks, I apologize I should have been more clear. Most of my printers are connected as local printers to a workstation via USB or parallel. How do I access the printer management when it is connected via USB or LPT to a computer?

 

[w33mhz]

Well like I stated earlier you will need to use somekind of remote software like pcanywhere, remote desktop, ultraVNC, or something to that effect to connect to each remote machine individually. Once connected you can than manage the printer. I suggest ultraVNC it works a lot faster that pcanywhere or RDP, esspecially accross some slower links.

 

[mofusjtf]

Gotcha. I use PC Anywhere to remote to my W2k Pro wkstns. Once connected via PC Anywhere, how would I access the management console of the printer. Via a web browswer? What do I put in for the address since the printer does not have an IP address?

 

[w33mhz]

MMMmmm, well didn't you say they were LOCAL printers? You can't setup IP printing on local printers. Once on the console of the remote workstation just go Start >> Settings >> Printers, and manage the printers like a normal local printer. Now, if you wanted to remotely manage the printers via a network connection instead of using PC Anywhere, you could share the printers on the workstations, then you could browse to the machines with the local printers shared and right click and select connect to connect them to your machine. Then you could do a sudo remote management of them. This isn't the best way to do it, but you could do it that way. You may have some authentication issues with this method. If you did it this way you would be in your best intrest to create a local accont on the machines and give them rights to manage the printer.
Now if you are in a domain enviornment, and all the machines are joined to the domain then you shouldn't have any issues with authentication, assuming you have at least local power users rights on the remote machines.