Printing Access to a WiFi Printer at Home
Overview
This document will provide information related to printing at home to a personal WiFi printer while accessing the Metropolitan State University network on a university computer.
How To/Details/Error/Symptom
A request is made in regards to be able to print to a print to a WiFi device at home while connected to the Metro State network over VPN (VPN is required to always be on for Windows devices).
Solutions
- Employees can set up their work computers (connected to VPN) to print to home wireless printers. Install a printer in Windows 10 and a Add a Printer on Mac.
- If you are unable to locate the printer when searching and computer is connected to VPN, use the following info to diagnose:
- There are 2 IP ranges used for local networking 192.0 and 10.0. (Metro uses 10.0). If the computer/printer have an IP address starting with 10.0, it will not work. The traffic gets redirected to Metro over the VPN and cannot talk to the printer. Any network with the 192.0 address should work.
- Example for finding the IP address on a Windows computer: Use the "ipconfig" command in the Command Prompt. The information to verify is labelled under "IPv4 Address".
- This could also lead to a scenario where WiFi printing to a personal computer at home will work on a Mac, but will stop working when connected to VPN.
- Connect to the printer directly via a USB connection.
- Send prints to Metro-Print and retrieve on one of our campus locations.