HomePage :: CitrixReplacementUsingRemoteVNC :: RemotePrintingWithVNC
Remote Printing With VNC
There may be several solutions to this problem, but here is one which I've been pondering lately:
Casual usage
A casual user would be a road warrior for instance, or some office worker that occasionally logs in from home to check his mail, etc.. The simplest way for him to print his documents remotely is to mail them to himself and print from the remote machine. Presumably a road warrior will have a yahoo or hotmail account that would suffice for this task.
Non-casual usage
A non-casual user might be a secretary at a remote office, or a telecommuting user. Since this kind of user will be printing more frequently than a road warrior, he would want a more permanent printing solution.
An IP or networked printer (Windows thinks of this in terms of a dedicated port, say port 1337 on IP 192.168.1.100, instead of a regular printer share on some workstation) is far easier to set up in this case. Set up an SSH server at the remote office (a Linux firewall works wonders for this), and set up a connection originating from the main office to the remote office, forwarding to the IP and port of the printer.
The user will have two SSH connections established at this point (one in each direction) the first one outbound to the main office for VNC tunnelling, and the second one inbound for printer access from his PC at the main office. He will then need tell his PC at the main office about the printer at the remote location, reserving a port for the printer, as noted above.
It should be noted that the remote user doesn't have to purchase a networked printer. A print server (HP JetDirect boxen, for example) would convert his regular printer into an IP printer. Alternately, the Linux firewall might be pressed into service as a print server, but there are security issues that need to be addressed before this option is chosen. Of course, if the remote office has a dedicated Linux server doing file sharing and the like, this would eliminate the security issues inherent in using an edge device for non-essential services.