Connecting Network A to a printer on Network B.

[thecomputerguy]

I went out to a small-time client ... 3 computers and a little bit of simple file sharing, and replaced their router with one I had in stock because it died. I replaced their router with an ASUS router because it was all I had at the time.

Their setup is simple, Verizon modem to ASUS router, to Gigabit Switch, to 3 computers total.

The problem is with their old router, which also daisy chained into a verizon router, which was kind of a mess to be honest they were able print to a printer on their neighbors network which they share office space with.

So I have our Network 'A' with 3 computers on a 192.168.0.1 network, their neighbor is a 10.10.10.1 network, both have their own WAN and are otherwise completely separate. I have an available network cable that when I plug my laptop into will give me a 10.10.10.XXX IP and then I am able to ping the printer which is at 10.10.10.100.

How can I give my Network 'A' 192.168.0.1 access to the printer on the 10.10.10.1 Network B?

I've tried plugging the available 10.10.10.XXX network cable into both our switch and router on Network A which did not work.

Not sure if I'm missing something simple here, I've been sick for 2 weeks and permanently groggy from Nyquil.

 

[TazUk]

I've tried plugging the available 10.10.10.XXX network cable into both our switch and router on Network A which did not work.

Where on the router did you plug it in, one of the LAN ports or a secondary WAN port?

Does the router support VLAN's?

 

[thecomputerguy]

Where on the router did you plug it in, one of the LAN ports or a secondary WAN port?

Does the router support VLAN's?

I plugged it into one of the LAN ports it does not have a secondary WAN port ... here it is...http://a.co/a8GMvwv

Not sure if it supports VLANS

 

[thecomputerguy]

I think I might be able to do this using 'static routes' built into the ASUS gui but I'm still not sure how to configure those.... Anyone?

 

[DataMedics]

You should just look into google cloud print: https://www.google.com/cloudprint/

You can share any printer to/from anywhere in the world. Even if the printer doesn't natively support it, you can install a Chrome plugin that'll share it from a local computer to the google cloud. I use it so I can print things from my phone to my office no matter where I am.

 

[thecomputerguy]

You should just look into google cloud print: https://www.google.com/cloudprint/

You can share any printer to/from anywhere in the world. Even if the printer doesn't natively support it, you can install a Chrome plugin that'll share it from a local computer to the google cloud. I use it so I can print things from my phone to my office no matter where I am.

They also use the scanning functionality built into the printer ... It's like one of those massive $8,000 giant Multi-Functions

 

[phaZed]

I know this is going to be the most vague answer as far as exactly 'how' you accomplish this (So many different routers) - but use the router to ROUTE to the other network addressing space.

With my EdgeMax router, for instance, I have 192.168.1.x / 192.168.2.x / 192.168.5.x networks and they are all routed to each other and/or port forwarding, etc.

 

[thebige]

Could you place one network behind the second?

For instance you have the ISP handing out DHCP then router A handing out another subnet then have router B behind it handing out the last subnet? If so you could apply static IPs to the printer and manually install them with the static IPs. Because network B can absolutely ping IPs in network A even though they have separate subnets. The DNS won't apply unless you have a domain controller in play to handle the forward nd reverse look up zones.

Anyway, I've done this type of setups and had it work. It isn't pretty, but it can work.

 

[TazUk]

I plugged it into one of the LAN ports it does not have a secondary WAN port ... here it is...http://a.co/a8GMvwv

A quick Google suggests it does support dual WAN's, although that might only be by using third party firmware such as Tomato. If it does set LAN1 as the secondary WAN port, give it a fixed IP address on the 10.10.10.x network and attach a cable from LAN1 to the router on network B. Ideally you would want to disable NAT on WAN2, but it might not be configurable per connection.

How is the scanning initiated, from the PC or from the printer?

 

[thecomputerguy]

A quick Google suggests it does support dual WAN's, although that might only be by using third party firmware such as Tomato. If it does set LAN1 as the secondary WAN port, give it a fixed IP address on the 10.10.10.x network and attach a cable from LAN1 to the router on network B. Ideally you would want to disable NAT on WAN2, but it might not be configurable per connection.

How is the scanning initiated, from the PC or from the printer?

This! THIS RIGHT HERE!

Setup dual WAN and enabled Port 1 as the secondary WAN port for Load Balancing (hopefully this isn't bad), and got a WAN IP of the other network ... interestingly I wasn't able to ping the printer but on a whim I attempted access to the web interface using the IP of the printer and I GOT IN!

Did a test print and everything worked fine! Scanning is done by email ... Which apparently now is another issue I can't figure out ...

Nothing changed on the printer end from a network standpoint but now their scan to email isn't working which is very odd since they just use a standard gmail account that forwards to their personal email boxes.

I don't get it, it should just be a simple smtp.gmail.com TLS 587 SMTP server but we are getting cannot connect to server errors even though nothing changed with the printer ... any ideas?

It's one of those giant Konica Minolta's with the HUGE GUI.... it has an IP, subnet, gateway, DNS is setup for their onsite DNS first then google DNS ... So I don't get how what I did would break the SMTP email from the printer.

 

[Markverhyden]

Put a computer in the place of the printer using the printer's IP. Temporarily of course, and test email.

 

[thecomputerguy]

Put a computer in the place of the printer using the printer's IP. Temporarily of course, and test email.

I'm very restricted in what I can do with that printer because it's not theirs nor is it on their network. So if I do something that somehow F's it up on their side I'll be in a pretty bad spot.

 

[Markverhyden]

Your not actually doing something with the printer. The point is to put a computer in it's place and then test email. I'm still not entirely clear on how it's setup but that would be part of my standard troubleshooting. Email works on the computer then it's a printer setting, if email does not work on the computer it's a networking issue.

 

[allanc]

This! THIS RIGHT HERE!

Setup dual WAN and enabled Port 1 as the secondary WAN port for Load Balancing (hopefully this isn't bad), and got a WAN IP of the other network ... interestingly I wasn't able to ping the printer but on a whim I attempted access to the web interface using the IP of the printer and I GOT IN!

Did a test print and everything worked fine! Scanning is done by email ... Which apparently now is another issue I can't figure out ...

Nothing changed on the printer end from a network standpoint but now their scan to email isn't working which is very odd since they just use a standard gmail account that forwards to their personal email boxes.

I don't get it, it should just be a simple smtp.gmail.com TLS 587 SMTP server but we are getting cannot connect to server errors even though nothing changed with the printer ... any ideas?

It's one of those giant Konica Minolta's with the HUGE GUI.... it has an IP, subnet, gateway, DNS is setup for their onsite DNS first then google DNS ... So I don't get how what I did would break the SMTP email from the printer.

We have had those issues (works one day and not the next) with Konica's in the past.
We resolved by this by obtaining the IP address of the client's SMTP server and used *that* instead of smtp.gmail.com.
We also needed the credentials of a valid Email address and password (of course).
You will need to adjust the IP if the ISP changes the IP of their SMTP server.
We tried to use DHCP (with the ISPs SMTP server) but I could not quickly debug that set of issues.