Printing Remotely

Actually the 2600N doesn't have a JetDirect interface and it turns out it's also not compatible with IPP according to an HP page I found. I guess I'm out of luck going about IPP with this printer. Also, I tried printing to it using a Standard TCP/IP port (using the printers' internal IP address 192.168.10.90) per the print/fax setup interface in XP. The 2600N would only print using the HP Standard TCP/IP port. My C7280 printer would print just find using a Standard TCP/IP port (192.168.10.91) setup via the same interface and I believe the C7280 also is compatible with IPP.

Thanks. I read the paper and it was informative.

Actually the C7280 has an ethernet interface and wifi as well (which I'm not using). If it does have a USB interface and I'm not using it either.

Both my HP 2600N and the HP C7280 are plugged directly into my Zyxel X550 router.

I've been trying to play around with dynamic DNS. I've enabled my router to be remotely configurable and it opened port 8080 to facilitate this. As a test I thought I'd be able to plug in mydomain.dyndns.org:8080/192.168.x.x in the browser and be able to access the router. Doing so at least from within my LAN doesn't work. I was hoping there might be some web site to allow remote testing such as this (without having to physically go remote).

Oops. I never did find a page that indicated if it did IPP or not, so I guessed. Sorry.

Ok. Got it.

Without IPP support in the 2600N, it's not going to work. That leaves setting up a VPN to your network. Such VPN's are usually terminated in the router (as in a VPN router) but can also be terminated in a server operating system.

Nope. If you configure remote admin on port 8080 (the default) you dod NOT need to port forward or "open" port 8080. Remote admin simply recognizes connections to port 8080 on the WAN (internet) interface. If you also redirect or "open" port 8080, it will send those packets to whatever LAN IP address you have it configured. That's not what you want.

Nope. From the internet, you should be able to use:

which will get you to the remote admin web server in the Zyxel. For example, here's mine:

for DD-WRT.

I have no idea what you're trying to do with the 192.168.x.x at the end, after the port number.

I just went to my own router using:

Works fine. No clue how it will work with your Zyxel. It's tricky connecting to the WAN interface on your own router, but it does work on some routers. Try both http:// and https:// to be sure.

I'm sure you're right. I'll start looking next at VPN as a means to print remotely.

Right. I didn't mean to say that I'd opened 8080. I was trying to say that port 8080 was designated by the router automatically for remote access.

Both work fine. However I can't get this to work for my own router from within my own LAN probably due, as you suspect, to my router not allowing a connection to the WAN from within its own LAN. Tomorrow I'll try it again. Once I have confidence my dyndns.org solution works I can look at VPN. Thanks by the way for sharing your remote access address. That was a good experiment.

My Zyxel router apparently only supports VPN pass through. I do have a WRT54G with DDWRT but I'm using it as a wireless bridge to connect my DVR and Xbox to the network. It's a v5.1 and can only run the DDWRT micro code. VPN pass through for it as well.

It isn't worth it for me to have to buy a new router to get VPN. I appreciate your's and other contructive responses here. Thanks.

That's a shame. I've been using my WRT54G for this purpose for several years now. Works great. Make a VPN connection back to the house and print away! No need to use anything different, driver-wise for the printer. Given how cheap the routers are, and that DD-WRT is free, it's worth the small price to pay for the functionality.

-Bill Kearney

Thanks Bill but right now I've got a Zyxel router I'm using as the router/gateway and a Linksys WRT54G (w/DD-WRT) I'm using as a wireless bridge to connect my DVR and Xbox to the network. The WRT54G is a v5.1 and as such only functions with the micro version of DD-WRT which does not provide true VPN functionality but only VPN pass through. I agree that Linksys routers are cheap but I don't want to go out and purchase a 3rd unit to replace to other units which otherwise function. I was hoping for a solution with my current equipment.

You make a great point though that in the future should I decide to replace the Zyxel X550, a new Linksys WRT54G would fit the bill very well. It's a shame the Zyxel X550, a very good home router, is not, as far as I can tell, compatible with free 3rd party firmware.

Still pursuing DDNS access to my network. I'm in real estate now (a new life) and I wanted to be able to sometimes print out documents from the office to my home. I can't access your link above from the office and wonder if :8080 could be blocked on this network. That being the case, I couldn't utilize this solution to print remotely even if I had an IPP capable printer. If I go with VPN instead, would I have the same obstacle (ie ports being blocked) that would hinder my printing remotely?

Well, we're down to a limited number of choices.

1. IPP
2. VPN (PPTP, IPSec, SSL)
3. NETBIOS over the internet (a VERY bad idea)

Oops(tm). My fault. I was testing DSL modems and left one in line. It was setup for NAT in the modem resulting in breaking all the port forwarding. Try again, it should work now.

There's also my office router at:

but it has a different problem. I was tinkering with the configuration a few evenings ago, and apparently broke remote admin on port 8080. Wait until Fri eve and hopefully it will be working again.

Standard sanity check is to try and ping the router. In this case, both my routers respond to ping.

Note: The wind is blowing rather nicely, which usually means that I'll loose connectivity shortly.

It's very unlikely that your ISP is blocking 8080. Looks like you're on BellSouth. As far as I know, they don't block any incoming ports.

Different port numbers.

Yep. The subdomain "home" is working now and brought me to your router admin summary page. I'm assuming you own learnbydestroying.com, so how do you get home.learnbydestroying.com to get redirected to your IP address? I have a couple of domains and one in particular I'd like to use the way you have.

I wasn't saying my ISP was potentially blocking 8080. I was saying the office network I was using at the time might have been. Based on what you're saying and that your link I was testing was down, you're right, it's unlikely that port was blocked.

I'm looking at the Linksys WRV210 router (has VPN and other goodies to play around with). I've read some mixed reviews on this and its predecessor the WRV200. Do you have any experience with this particular router?

Office should now be working. The router wasn't hung, but power cycling it restored the remote admin function. I'm not sure what happened. I keep juggling routers (burnin) and may have hit a lemon. I'll leave it for now and see what breaks:

Speaking of breaking things, try:

on your router. I've seen some model routers and firmware version experience hangs when the router exploits test is run.

LearnByDestroying.com is registered with Joker.com. They have sub-domains and URL redirection. To get the home sub domain, I simply add it to their config menu and point it to the IP address of my home DSL. You can only redirect a sub-domain to a specific IP address, but not a FQDN (fully qualified domain name). I have static IP's for both home and office specifically for the purpose. To redirect a domain to a moving target (i.e. DHCP assigned IP or DDNS assigned FQDN), you should use URL redirection instead.

C:\\>nslookup Default Server: router Address: 192.168.111.1

Server: router Address: 192.168.111.1 Non-authoritative answer: learnbydestroying.com nameserver = b.ns.joker.com learnbydestroying.com nameserver = c.ns.joker.com learnbydestroying.com nameserver = a.ns.joker.com

Default Server: a.ns.joker.com Address: 66.252.21.107

Server: a.ns.joker.com Address: 66.252.21.107 home.learnbydestroying.com internet address = 63.249.85.127 learnbydestroying.com nameserver = a.ns.joker.com learnbydestroying.com nameserver = b.ns.joker.com learnbydestroying.com nameserver = c.ns.joker.com a.ns.joker.com internet address = 66.252.21.107 b.ns.joker.com internet address = 66.197.237.21 c.ns.joker.com internet address = 66.252.21.106

Note that home.learnbydestroying.com points to a specific IP address, and not another subdomain.

For those that detest the command line, download Sam Spade 1.14, and use the built in "dig" function to excavate the same info.

Sorry, no first hand experience.