User printing onsite - multi-site with WAN connection

This type of environment is typical in larger businesses that have interconnectivity between their offices. With this type of setup, each office has the ability to connect and use resources from all offices. 

The environment might consist of a central office, usually the company head office, and a range of smaller to larger offices around the state, country, or globe. All offices have constant direct connectivity back to the head office only via a VPN connection (commonly known as hub and spoke). 

The other main setup for these types of customers involves all sites being connected with a constant direct connection between multiple sites. For example, a head office in Melbourne has direct connectivity with offices in Portland in Oregon, and Bracknell in England. There is also a direct connection between Portland Oregon and Bracknell England (full interconnectivity between sites).

Businesses of this size often have a mixed setup in their environments, with a number of their servers hosted internally and some SaaS solutions. These customers leverage the best of both worlds and only choose to move to SaaS solutions when they make the most sense in regards to security, flexibility, and cost. 

Typical customers include:

• Universities
• medium to large businesses
• healthcare.

Recommended solution

There are a few different methods by which customers set up printing in these environments. The right solution for you depends on how you want printing to work. 

Scenario 1: Allow anyone to be able to print and release to any printer in the organization

If you want all users to be able to print and release to any printer in the organization, you’ll want to allow edge nodes to communicate across all sites and subnets. 

You need to ensure that you open comms between the edge nodes on your VPN connections. Check out our Firewall ports and networking webpage. This allows the edge nodes to transfer print jobs across the VPN to your other sites. 

As a user, you will be able to submit a job from anywhere in your network and release the job to any printer in the network. 

Scenario 2: Minimise VPN traffic/bandwidth

Many organizations run VPN connectivity for highly important internal systems, such as VOIP traffic, server redundancy, and database access. In most organizations, cross-site printing just doesn’t meet the brief, with organizations wanting to keep print jobs and printer communications local to each site.

If you want to limit the printing bandwidth across your VPN connection, look to allow edge node connectivity between subnets at each local site, but restrict edge node communications across the VPN link. You can find the edge node ports on our Firewall ports and Networking page. 

You’ll still be able to allow site-to-site printing - just enable the cloud node in your environment. 

For example, you print a job at site 1 and then attempt to release the job to site 2. The cloud node accepts the print job from site 1 and delivers it to an edge node at site 2, bypassing your VPN connection.

How printing with PaperCut Hive and Pocket works

For a summary of how printing works with PaperCut Hive and Pocket, take a look at the How it works page in the manual. 

For a detailed look at the print job process and release print job process, including the ports and communications at each step, refer to The print process and The release print job process below.

Pros and cons

Network diagram

Scenario 1 - Allow anyone to be able to print and release to any printer in the organization

Scenario 2 - Minimize VPN traffic/bandwidth

Ports

If you’re running the Full Embedded app, some platforms (MFDs) need additional ports to allow communications. For the complete list of ports, refer to Firewall ports and Networking .

The print job process

We are going to assume at this point that you have already read through the articles about getting your users joined to your print environment and that their computers or devices are configured to print. If you haven’t, read Getting started for administrators , which details the prerequisites and how to get your users set up.

Let’s now run through the process involved when a user prints in this environment.

Printing from Windows/Mac/Chromebook/Android

Printing from iOS devices

The release print job process

When it’s time for the end-user to release the print job, there are two different methods:

• MFD Release
• mobile device release.

MFD release

Mobile device release - via cloud service

Mobile device release - offline mode

If the link to the cloud services is unavailable, for example, your Internet Provider has gone offline, you can still release print jobs using your mobile device connected to your local WiFi. Here’s what the comms looks like.

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