Accessing networked printer remotely

[dsl-jds]

My church has the following setup.
Verizon DSL, dynamic IP, using the Westell 2200 modem router with DHCP enabled. Linksys 8 port workgroup switch. Five computers connected to the switch (Peer to Peer), all running Windows XP Home. In addition we have a Toshiba eStudio45 copier/printer connected to the switch. All is working very well.

Now the pastor has asked if it were possible for him to access the Toshiba from his home utilizing dial up. And, possibly myself from home using my DSL connection. We have no need to access the other computers on the LAN, just the printer. The printer has its own static internal IP address.

My investigation has shown that there may be two ways to do this, VPN or Web Sharing. Is it possible to set this up to directly access the printer without having to go through one of the computers on the LAN? Would Web Sharing work? I suspect that I'd need to use one of the computers to access VPN and then share the printer. Do we need a static IP from our ISP? I need hints on what should be enabled on each end.

Thanks.

[YeOldeStonecat]

PcAnywhere allows for local and remote printing.

DynDNS.Org services (free) will allow you to connect to a dynamic IP router/computer using a host name you assign when you sign up for the account.

[dsl-jds]

YOSC, if I may shorten it to that. ;)

The PcAnywhere solution is a bit expensive for the church budget.
So any other ideas?
Does Win XP Home support VPN? I'm getting the impression that only the XP Pro edition does.

[YeOldeStonecat]

VNC is free. I don't believe it supports printer redirection....so if you intend to print to the church printer from a documents located on your home machine, I don't believe that will work. PcAnywhere supports that.

But if you intend on printing stuff at the church, from documents or whatever that are located on the "host" computer at the church...then VNC will do just fine.

///insert appropriate warnings about security, since you'll be exposing a service, good strong passwords, etc///

[dsl-jds]

Thanks again.

This isn't high on my priority list for the church. It came up in conversation so I thought I'd investigate the possibility and got myself into a lot of reading. So, I asked the question here.

For now this subject is dead. :cool: