Success! Win client printing across the net to an AE USB printer at last!

After a great deal of f.....g around in this forum and many others plus hours of trial and error I have finally been able to get a windows client to print across the internet to a printer attached to the USB port of an Airport Extreme base station! I wish Apple had documented this..

I will try and relate the setup that has this working.

AE is running firmware version 7.4.2

I have a HP Laserjet 3055 printer.

I have successfully printed from a Windows 7 and a Windows 2003 (64bit) server machine

Here is how it works

1. Setup a dns entry from your AE - I did this through dyndns.com. They have a great set of simple instructions on their site for the novice to follow.
2. In the airport utility (Airport-base station-edit) enter a global host name. This is the xxxx.dyndns.com name you created above. I also entered my login username and password from dyndns in here. Once I did this I performed a check on my setup by adding a ftp port mapping on the AE. I mapped port 21 to go to my mbp (which had ftp setup) and then I used a ftp client on my iphone to connect via 3g to verify that I could indeed connect via ftp.
3. If you have not already done so attach your printer to the AE and verify that you can print to it locally.
4. In the AE utility I ticked share printers over WAN and Share Printers over the internet using bonjour.
5. On the Win clients I then installed bonjour (this is a download from apples web site - just google bonjour for windows)
6. On the win clients i added a new printer with the following settings
- add a network printer using tcp/ip
- hostname or ip address was the hostname I created in step 1 and port name equals 9100
- follow through the rest of the settings selecting the correct printer driver etc.
- Print test page and voila you should have success
- for your reference the printers port settings read
- Port Name = 9100
- Printer Name or IP Address = xxxxx.dyndns.com
- Protocol = Raw
- Raw settings - Port Number = 9100
- no other settings are enabled

So there you go it seems quite simple after all....

Good luck

Plugger

Airport Extreme 7.4.2, Mac OS X (10.6.1), Airport Internet printing

Posted on Oct 20, 2009 2:22 PM

Reply
5 replies

Nov 15, 2009 7:59 PM in response to plugger14

I wanted to thank you for posting this. This feature is so usefull for me. I had been looking for the solution since I saw this setting in my AE.

I do want to add that Apple's support for this product leaves something to be desired. I have been on the phone with them several time and what I got from their support staff was that this feature is unsupported.
Shame on Apple. You are supposed to be leading the way on "ease of use".

Once again thanks for your posting. I was stuck just in the last step on how to add the printer and your intrcutions worked perfectly.

I am adding a few keywords to help people who search for this.
Printing over WAN, Print from internet, How to add printer.

Jan 9, 2010 2:05 PM in response to plugger14

I just wanted to say thank you for posting this. I was about ready to give up. I have been having major trouble getting my Dell Color LaserJet 1320c to print using the Apple Airport Extreme (Wireless-N) on Windows 7 64-bit. I tried ports 9100, 9101, 9202, and even tried setting the IP address. I could not get it to work. Using latest drivers as well.

The second I created a dyndns account it worked instantly. Thank you so much!

Feb 12, 2010 10:54 AM in response to plugger14

The ability to print over the internet to my AEBS printers has been like the search for the Holy Grail. I find tantalizing bits of information across the 'net but nothing comprehensive that allows me to fully set up my AEBS properly AND shows me how to add my shared printer from a remote computer. Very frustrating!

This post seems to have come the closest to providing enough details, but rather than trying to print from a remote Windows computer, I'm trying to print from a couple of remote Macs. I'm looking for anyone that's been able to successfully print over the internet to their shared printer(s) attached to an AEBS. I've set up my AEBS and a dynDNS global host name pretty much as described here by the OP. I've successfully tested being able to connect (using my dyndns.com host name) to my home Mac by setting up VNC port mapping. So... it appears I have the dyndns host name working properly. Here's the basic setup of my AEBS:

1. Firmware v. 7.4.2
2. a Belkin 4-port (AC-powered) USB hub is connected thru the USB port
3. one hard drive and 2 printers connected to the USB hub
Printer #1 = Brother HL-2140; Printer #2 = Epson Stylus R200
(I've successfully printed to both printers from the local network)
4. Under the Airport Utility>Base Station>Edit button, I've checked "Use dynamic global hostname"
and entered in my dyndns.com hostname and user info
5. Under the Printers section, I've checked "Share Printers over WAN" and "Share printers over the
internet using Bonjour" options

From what I've read here and elsewhere, this looks to be the necessary settings on the AEBS side of things for this to work. If anyone sees something missing or incorrect, I'd love to hear about it.

I guess my bigger issue is finding out the steps & settings to add my AEBS-shared printers on my remote Macs so that I can print to them over the internet. From all the specs and how the settings/options read on the AEBS utility, over-the-internet printing SHOULD be possible, but this has been a ridiculous exercise in frustration.

To plugger14: I was wondering where port 9100 came from on your setup? Did you manually assign that port number when you added a network printer on Win7, or did that get added automatically as you went thru the network printer setup?

Feb 12, 2010 7:37 PM in response to hawkgx1968

hawkgx1968 I've got a bit of experience printing across the internet to an Airport Express although I used Wide-Area Bonjour which negates much of the frustration you've experienced.

Port 9100 is the PDL printing port. The Airport should map (port-forward) this automatically for you if your router supports NAT-PMP or uPNP. If you add a JetDirect/Socket based IP printer in Printer Preferences it should work. The reason I say should work is because I've not had to add a printer manually as with Wide-Area Bonjour the printer shows up in the same way as if it were local.

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Success! Win client printing across the net to an AE USB printer at last!

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