This is definitely one of those odd-ball scenarios where there just may not be a way to do it, but I thought I'd put it out there and see what the ideas are.
So I have a printer that is connected to a very expensive point of sale system that runs windows embedded, but that can't be touched because proprietary/pci compliance/you name it. This laser print chews through at least 30 pages each night printing reports. About every 10 days it needs the tray refilled. The problem is, I can't get there every 10 days.
The printouts will spool to a certain extent and there's a printer buffer to a certain extent, but it's not bulletproof. And then I waste hours having to go through reports and reprint stuff, which again isn't technically the original since it says 'reprint' on it.
It would be really nice if I could just relocate this usb connected printer to wherever I am via some sort of transparent set of 'usb over tcp/ip' boxes. Something that I can plug into the computer on one end and the printer on the other and can have any sort of IP network in between.
Blackbox and Startech both seem to make such devices, but their limitation is that they only work within a single subnet/switch. It seems they use igmp snooping or igmp broadcast to communicate between the boxes. I would think that if you can enable igmp between networks, maybe these devices will be able to work, but am not certain enough to try it at this point since these boxes aren't cheap to begin with and testing this setup will take probably a month because the printer will more than likely be 2000+ miles away from the POS unit.
I can't touch the printer. I can't touch the computer. I can do anything I want to the network. Any ideas?
So I have a printer that is connected to a very expensive point of sale system that runs windows embedded, but that can't be touched because proprietary/pci compliance/you name it. This laser print chews through at least 30 pages each night printing reports. About every 10 days it needs the tray refilled. The problem is, I can't get there every 10 days.
The printouts will spool to a certain extent and there's a printer buffer to a certain extent, but it's not bulletproof. And then I waste hours having to go through reports and reprint stuff, which again isn't technically the original since it says 'reprint' on it.
It would be really nice if I could just relocate this usb connected printer to wherever I am via some sort of transparent set of 'usb over tcp/ip' boxes. Something that I can plug into the computer on one end and the printer on the other and can have any sort of IP network in between.
Blackbox and Startech both seem to make such devices, but their limitation is that they only work within a single subnet/switch. It seems they use igmp snooping or igmp broadcast to communicate between the boxes. I would think that if you can enable igmp between networks, maybe these devices will be able to work, but am not certain enough to try it at this point since these boxes aren't cheap to begin with and testing this setup will take probably a month because the printer will more than likely be 2000+ miles away from the POS unit.
I can't touch the printer. I can't touch the computer. I can do anything I want to the network. Any ideas?