Allow domain name entry in add printer

Now that companies are shifting to working remotely, they are also rolling out unique solutions. One of those is zscaler, a tool for remote encrypted resource access. However, unlike a VPN you don’t have raw access to the LAN. So no automatic printer scanning and no manual access via IP. The only solution then is to give the printer a DNS entry and then be able to input that information directly. Right now in preform IP addresses are the only way to input that info.

Without this upgrade our printers cannot be accessed remotely and jobs cannot be uploaded.

Hi b_sullivan,

Could you clarify what you mean by “no manual access via IP”?

DNS generally just converts names to IP addresses… so usually if you’re using DNS, there’s IP going on under the hood. Did you perhaps mean that IP addresses can’t be statically maintained?

I don’t dislike the DNS name feature you suggested, I’m just not sure I understand your constraints.

Under Zscaler you can’t ping an IP, there is no raw network access. They tout it as a security feature. If I open up the “Network” feature in windows nothing will show up vs if I’m using the VPN I can see every single host on the network. Access to shares is handled by accessing the domain name directly. So if there’s no local DNS entry for an entity then you can’t gain access. For example, trying to access \192.168.1.100 will not work, but accessing \server1.domain.com that maps to that IP will work.

So in order to get this to work I need to first request a DNS entry be created for the printer and then I need to be able input the name into the preform software.