SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

Have two companies in the same office, different domains and both have a PDC for file and mail. Two switches and they are only joined for web access via draytek router. Company A has all the good printers on its switch. Company B wants to use the printers from Company A .

Problem is: we cant just add the printer to the other switch nor can we add both switches together as the PDC's handle DHCP and will force an election.
The printers only have one network port so we cant configure IP address's for different networks.
And we cant demote the PDC to a BDC as they are different domains.

So....is there anything on the market like a hardware bridge that will allow the printers to be on both switches ??

NXG

Can your router handle any firewall functionality? You could NAT the printers on one domain to an IP on the other, then use manual DNS entries to ref them. No domain shennanigans required.

SwissTony

iTrader: (19)

that may work, I may need a little bit more info on that to see if it will sort it

NXG

Should be ok. From your comment 'different networks' I assume it's two different company networks that share the same Internet gateway router? Even if they have the same IP addressing scheme NAT will still work.

Just FYI, there may well be a system's solution, but I'm a network/security monkey so wouldn't know it

ChrisB

Wildcard thought... if the printers are using a built-in Ethernet port and have a free USB/parallel port, get a print server to plug into that and patch that on to Company B's LAN.