[ipad] Printing and changing proxies...

[Koldov]

Hi All,

 

Just a quickie!

 

We had been having issues trying to use our iPads to print to our Kyocera MFD's (nothing new there I hear you cry!), however we've had a couple of the guys that support them (as we are on a contract) fail to help us too! It was annoying as some other apps gave us limited functionality and a couple of android tablets printed from the Kyocera app straight away!

 

We downloaded the Kyocera iPad app, but it could never see any of our printers. The last guy that came in went through all the settings again, Bonjour, i.p.'s, subnets, vlans (even suggesting we should wheel it down to the switch room and plug it in to different ports lol!), we are running Windows print servers and I thought that might be a stumbling block.

 

However, more by luck than judgement between us we stumbled on the reason...

 

Our internet uses a proxy and as the app would not automatically 'find' the printers, we had entered an i.p. address. I'm guessing the iPad then assumes that this is an address on the internet and therefore tries to apply the internet settings, proxy server et al.

 

Question is, as this app works when the proxy setting is off, is there an easy way for me to help the teachers turn the proxy on or off as needed.

 

Please note the use of 'easy' and 'teachers' in the last sentence...

 

We use a VB script to set the proxy for work or home on the Windows laptop and I'm hoping there is an app or something to do the same for the iPad. I really can't see them all going into Wi-Fi settings every time and not doing something silly and I don't want to give out our proxy server address and wireless key (as they will probably delete that as well) and make them type it out numerous times a day (because I know I will end up doing for them anyway).

 

I've had a quick look at proxy changer apps, but they all seem to be for using a different proxy server to bypass blocked websites or other network security loopholes, so I'm not sure I want them on these iPads.

 

Kol.

[Lee-H]

Sounds like you could do with the set up we have here, we use a .pac file for our proxy and you are able to add exceptions to the file which you do not want resolved by the proxy, found this issue when setting up WebDAV on our iPads

 

Google proxy.pac file for ipads for guides how to set it up

[Koldov]

Sounds like you could do with the set up we have here, we use a .pac file for our proxy and you are able to add exceptions to the file which you do not want resolved by the proxy, found this issue when setting up WebDAV on our iPads

 

Google proxy.pac file for ipads for guides how to set it up

 

Yeah I've seen .pac files mentioned on here and the printer guy mentioned them too. I was hoping EDUGEEK would save me endless hours of Googling . I always end up with more questions than answers, it seems nobody else has done 'exactly' what you need to do and unfortunately a live environment is not one I want to use for testing!

 

But basically I write a .pac file which says all internet traffic goes through a proxy and this one printer i.p. doesn't?

 

How do you even get the iPad to see the (Windows) server share the .pac file is on? We are not running any web server stuff which seems to be mentioned alot.

 

Kol.

[Lee-H]

But basically I write a .pac file which says all internet traffic goes through a proxy and this one printer i.p. doesn't?

 

Yep that's correct

 

you will need to install the web server (IIS) role on your server so you can host the .pac file and then on the ipads change the proxy settings to 'auto' and instead of typing the address of the proxy you put the address of the web server - http://webserver/proxy.pac for example

 

This is my .pac file

 

function FindProxyForURL(url, host)
{
// variable strings to return
var proxy_yes = "PROXY [color=#ff0000]Proxy address here[/color]";
var proxy_no = "DIRECT";
if (shExpMatch(url, "[color=#ff0000]Put your Printer IP here as an exception[/color]*")) { return proxy_no; }
// Proxy anything else
return proxy_yes;
}

[Koldov]

Thanks for the help, but I'm not sure we have the scale of iPad useage to make an IIS webserver role install worthwhile. I'm not sure if I like the idea of putting something I'm not familiar with on the server, I've heard (from here mainly) if not properly configured/patched etc. it can be a security hole!

 

Well, with having to install an IIS webserver role to make iPads use proxy exceptions and the possibilty of having to install SCCM to make SCEP use a proxy, I'm all a bit proxied out this week

 

Kol.