Printing over the internet to a Printer connected by LPT1

[flashbacck]

I'm trying to figure out how to print from a laptop, over the internet, to my home printer. The home printer is connected to a desktop via LPT1 and is also behind a router.

Does anyone have any tips on how to do this?

 

[Missing Ghost]

Over the Internet? The best way is to use remote desktop. You just set it so that when you log in remotely it will show the drives of the computer that you are logging from into the "my computer" of your home's computer. Than you print them from there.

 

[flashbacck]

thanks I'll try that.

But doesn't remote desktop sound like a round-a-bout way to do this? It seems like there should be some software that would turn my desktop into a print server.

 

[Joemonkey]

Hrm, you have me wanting to try this out just for curiosity's sake...

First, make sure at home you have the printer shared. Go here and via your router forward all ports listed as "network printing" to your home PC. Remotely, add a printer, say it's a TCP/IP port, and then put in your home public IP address to see if you can add the printer then subsequently print to it.

 

[Joemonkey]

ok so ignore my last post, i was curious about how to do this, and successfully set it up. These instructions are assuming you are using windows XP with IIS installed.

First, make sure the printer attached to your computer is shared. Next, make sure your default web site is not in the Stopped state. If it is, start it. Forward port 80 from your router to your PC. From your PC at home go to www.ipchicken.com to get your external IP. From an external PC, type in http://your.ip.address.here/printers

You should get a login prompt, unless you allowed the Everyone group access to your printer. Type in the username and password of your PC at home, and you should see your printers. Alternatively, if you knew the share name of your printer you could type in http://your.ip.address.here/ShareName to get direct access to your printer.

On the left side of the screen you should see a Connect link. Click it, hit Yes at the prompt, wait for the Printer Installation progress bar to finish, and you should now be able to print from anywhere to your printer at home.

 

[flashbacck]

thanks for your help joemonkey. I have IIS setup, and I can see the printers page under my default website and can view it from my home PC (http://localhost/Printers). But when an outside user tries to see the page, all I get is a "The page cannot be displayed". I'm sure my router is setup to redirect port 80 properly. Windows firewall is also turned off. Any ideas on what I'm missing?

 

[Joemonkey]

Well, your ISP could be doing things to port 80 to prevent people from running web servers, try changing it to something like 8000 so your new external IP would be http://your.ip.address.here:8000/printers

of course make sure after you change your default website port to 8000 you stop and restart the service/website as well as forward port 8000 to your PC

 

[flashbacck]

hmm, still not working...

 

[Joemonkey]

If it's working locally i would think it has to do w/ port forwarding...

 

[flashbacck]

It sure seems that way... but I'm pretty sure I have port forwarding setup right. Is there any log or something I can check to see if an outside computer is trying to connect? This would verify port forwarding is working and might help figure out what's going on...

edit: I have another computer on the same network, and if I type in the LAN address of the first computer, I can access the web server. Which definitely points to a port forwarding problem...

 

[flashbacck]

Got it! I think it was a problem with my router (SMC 7004ABR). I updated my firmware and it started working.

Now I have another question... how do I set passwords for the webserver?

on a side note, I think setting the webserver port to other than 80 messes up the printer installation.

 

[Joemonkey]

well, the webserver will use local usernames and passwords if you turn off anonymous access to the default website in IIS.

and i used port 8080 to install the printer and it worked ok