Q: Can INTELLIscribe print through a firewall?
A: There are many ways to print from INTELLIscribe through a firewall. Just like all network questions, it depends on how the firewall is configured and what functions it is performing.
If your firewall is performing Network Address Translation (NAT), you will configure port forwarding on your firewall. The virtual printer port will be configured to use the external IP address of your firewall.
- If you are using the LPR/LPD protocol, you will forward traffic coming in on the port configured in INTELLIscribe to the internal IP address of the printer or print server. The internal port number should always be 515.
- If you are using Jetdirect, you will forward traffic coming in on the port configured in the INTELLIscribe virtual printer port to the internal IP address of the Jetdirect printer or print server, using whichever port your server is listening on, typically 9100, 9101, or 9102. Check your Jetdirect print server documentation for the correct port number.
If your firewall is not performing NAT, you will simply allow data to go through your firewall. This is called relaxing a port. In this case, you will configure the destination in INTELLIscribe to use the printer or print server's IP address.
Note: Your firewall may require you to supply the type of connection; both LPR/LPD and streams printing are TCP connections, not UDP.
Also remember that some low-end, low-cost firewalls do not support port forwarding.