We all already know, that DirectAccess is a decent technology from Microsoft to provide instant remote access to corporate resources from outside of the network and at the same time making laptop "feel like at home" with all the care from WSUS, System Center and Active Directory.
However sometime users want to print documents, when being in the office but on wifi (which is reasonably separated from the internal network with firewall, so DA is used to provide connectivity to internal network resources).
Read more to know how to provide users with printing services
Sure thing that print servers with a lot of shared printers can do the job well unless they are reachable with File and Printing services from DA client.
However print servers are not the only solution used by companies to provide users with paper smearing devices. I mean network printers, which are installed to users using TCP/IP ports. We will not talk about pros and cons of this solution, instead we'll concentrate on making it working for DA client.
This is how it looks like from user's perspective:
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Bunch of TCP/IP ports correlated with particular printer driver. Do you see the problem here? Ports are IPv4 addresses, and via DA you can get only IPv6 resources.
As a result there are several solutions to work around this problem:
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The 3rd option is as we already discussed to use print servers.
If you know other ways to allow users to print on corpnet printers while on DA you are welcome to comment!
However sometime users want to print documents, when being in the office but on wifi (which is reasonably separated from the internal network with firewall, so DA is used to provide connectivity to internal network resources).
Read more to know how to provide users with printing services
Sure thing that print servers with a lot of shared printers can do the job well unless they are reachable with File and Printing services from DA client.
However print servers are not the only solution used by companies to provide users with paper smearing devices. I mean network printers, which are installed to users using TCP/IP ports. We will not talk about pros and cons of this solution, instead we'll concentrate on making it working for DA client.
This is how it looks like from user's perspective:
As a result there are several solutions to work around this problem:
- Use IPv6 addresses for printers, they will be automatically available for users when on DA.
- However not all printers do support IPv6. In this case register printers in DNS as A records. And if you are running UAG or Windows 2012 to provide DA services, DNS64 and NAT64 will do the job perfectly for you.
Note: it is a good idea to use DNS names for IPv6 printers also!
In this case interface will look like:
The 3rd option is as we already discussed to use print servers.
If you know other ways to allow users to print on corpnet printers while on DA you are welcome to comment!