Is "IPP" the right way to achieve what I want?

[Andrew Pearce]

Hi,

Firstly, thanks for taking the time to read this.

I work for a small team, in a large company. We have a very small office, that we connect to the corporate network using a VPN client through broadband (we have 5 static ip addresses assigned to us from the brooadband provider, and we use a broadband router that provides a firewall and NAT/PAT etc.

Our problem is that when we connect to the VPN we loose connectivity to the two network printers in our small office. I have done some research and have found internet printing protocol (IPP) which allows you to print through via the internet.

My question is. Is this the best way to enable us to print to our local network printers whilst we are connected via the VPN client to our corporate network?
We have a hpux 11 server which I was going to use to configure as an IPP gateway.

If this is a good way to do it, does anyone have a good document for me to set this up?

Thanks in advance
Andrew

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Andrew,

You don't what you are using as a VPN client. I used the Cisco client and the Checkpoint client and lost not local network connectivity.

I'd look a bit more into the cause of the problem which might simply be VPN/firewall settings.

SEP

[Andrew Pearce]

We use Nortel Netwwork VPN client. I should also say that the local network printers are accessed by IP rather than netbuei and the VPN client amends the ip routing table of the windows clients. So the default route goes via the VPN tunnel rather than the local network. So we lose all connectivity to the "IP" local network, as it is on a private ip address range 192.168.x.x We can connect to servers etc through the internet using the 5 registed ip addresses, which the firewall then NAT/PAT back to the private address. (This makes access to a short/local lan device go via the vpn tunnel and out of the corporate network across the internet hit the broadband router which nats it back!!) Not ideal but at least it works. I was planning to do the same for printing, using IPP. I hope that explains the scenario I am in.

I also have no control over the corporate network or client, we just get told what to use, and how to connect :-(

Thanks
Andrew

[Greg Vaidman]

Basically, I would look for an option in your VPN client configuration along the lines of "allow local LAN access" or "split tunneling". If nothing like that, try to set up a static route to the printer(s). Lastly, talk to your LAN/VPN admin about enabling split tunneling from their side.

Also, you may want to ask the question here as well, or search for similar problems: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/vpn

[Steven E. Protter]

You have to convert the print servers from netbui. That will never work. IP based printing should be a snap.

Probably you'll want to use windbind to make it easier for Windows print queues to be found.

SEP