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The T-Mobile store I'm doing work for uses a CISCO VPN connection to the T-Mobile intranet so that they can access various apps via a citrix remote connection. The problem now is that when they try to print anything locally it shuts down the VPN connection. If I configure the local machines to print to the Brother HL-2170W over the network (it has a cat5 connection) then they can print fine without the VPN dropping, but anything they try to print from the remote connection over the VPN to the local printer still crashes it because it still has to be done via printer sharing.

Any ideas why this would crash the VPN connection? It worked fine up until the 28th of april which is apparently when they switched over to the Cisco VPN.

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That's how most VPN clients works:

You can't be simultaneously in both networks because most VPN clients disallow split-tunneling. Meaning that if you are connected to VPN, you are connected to the other network and not your local.

Consider asking to switch to a VPN system that has clients that allow split-tunneling.

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Both the main and backup VPN connection are set to allow access to the local network (split tunneling). If I print to the brother from a local app on the machine via it's local IP address it doesn't affect the connection at all. It's only when we try to print to it via file sharing (the USB connection) from the remote app that it freezes. Oddly enough, the print job still happens just fine, but the VPN ends up disconnected in the process. – Sootah May 21 '11 at 23:05
@Sootah: I think that's because the packet that travels back doesn't know how to get on the VPN network. – Tom Wijsman May 21 '11 at 23:14
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