Printing with VPN

I used a Virtual Private Network (VPN) utility to connect to my work network for many years. VPN has a tremendous security value, as it prevents other users on your local network (which could be a coffee shop, airport, or other highly insecure environment) from snooping or interfering with your computer's network activity. In recent years, I've been seeing a proliferation of VPN options for everyday users, even in security tools like Norton VPN, which is potentially a good thing. 

However, home users need to be aware that bringing up a VPN connection on one or more of your home computers has a downside, in that it isolates that computer from the other devices on your local network, which is normally a bad thing. That means you can't share files with other computers on your local network, and you can't even "see" or print to your local printer, without going through some additional steps. 

One possible option is configuring your VPN software to allow local connections where necessary, such as to your local printer.

Another option is remote printing. Some printer manufacturers are now providing support for printing to your local printer, by first sending your print job to their server on the Internet, and while this adds a small level of insecurity, I think it should allow you to print out from your computer using the VPN connection to the manufacturer's server in the Cloud, which will then send the print job back to your local printer, and get around that negative effect of the local network isolation inherent in a VPN connection. 

I haven't been using VPN myself, so I haven't had the opportunity to try any of these solutions, although I have tried enabling and using the remote print option on my HP multi-function printer, and it worked just fine. I didn't see the need for it at the time, but now with this VPN piece of the network puzzle, I can see how it could be very handy. 

Here's an article on printing over VPN.

Good luck out there!