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Cisco VPN Client 4.6.02.0011 -- Home Network Devices

Hi... I know I'm going to have to follow-up with my company system administrators, but am looking for info I can give them about this problem...

I have the client above running on a company-supplied laptop XP SP2. When at home I can connect to my house network (wired or wireless) and access the different PCs and printers.

However, once I connect to the company network via the client, those devices become unavailable. Clearly, the sysadmins at work have tightened things so I can have concurrent access to more than one network -- at home it's a workgroup, at work a domain.

This would be okay, except that as a frequent remote employee it is really unacceptable not to be able to print without disconnecting the printer from a PC on the home network and connecting it directly to my laptop.

Anyway I can convince the sysadmins to change the VPN client settings (or is it in my XP user policy?) so they can still maintain the level of security they need?

Thanks!

Reply to
DHarrington999
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The facility you would -like- to have enabled is called "split tunneling".

If I were the security admin, my response would likely be something along the lines of, "If it's such a bother, then connect your printer directly to the laptop, and print to there from the other systems [when the VPN isn't in use.]

Is it a company supplied printer? If so, then what is it doing attached to your personal computers? If not, then from a security standpoint, your desire to print is of about the same relevance as if someone asked for split tunneling so that they could continue to listen to an internet radio station while connected through the VPN.

Are there security dangers associated with printers? Yup. And there are security dangers associated with printing as well.

Is there any particular reason that you can't "print to file", and then print the accumulated files once you disconnect? Or just print normally and leave the files in the print queue for the unreachable printer, to be printed automatically once you are once more in communication with your home LAN.

Reply to
Walter Roberson

Well, that was a gentle "f--- you!" Thank you... I had suspected it was something along those lines, and as I'd said, I didn't want them to breach any security for me. I'll live with disconnecting and reconnecting. I was just hoping I could have my cake and eat it too... My next question was going to be how to listen to my favorite internet radio while on VPN... ;-)

Appreciate the response!

Reply to
DHarrington999

Printing in Windows requires a non-trivial infrastructure -- the same infrastructure that is responsible for file sharing... and you know how good MS's records has been on that.

If the printer ran lpr (TCP 515) then the risk would be relatively small. [Until, that is, that Windows Vista decided to disable lpr lest you be tempted to print a DRM controlled image.)

Reply to
Walter Roberson

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