I've been told I cannot send scanned docs outside of my LAN via FTP. Is it true?

[Guest]

My office has two scanners, a Savin MP C4503 and a Savin Aficio MP C4502.

In the Scan menu, they both have options to send out scanned documents via FTP. We have recently moved from using a Scanned Documents server inside of our LAN to a remote server that can be accessed via the Remote Desktop Connection program, etcetera.

Previously, when our documents were stored on a Windows machine inside of our office network, everybody had it set up on the scanner to send scanned documents via "SMB" to a mapped network folder visible on their desktops. They could then proceed to deal with the files accordingly and place them inside another mapped network folder which was mapped to the local scanned documents server.

Now that we have a remote server, having seen the FTP option in the scan menu, I figured I'd set up an FTP server on the remote machine so that the scanners could send documents directly to the remote Windows server, to a "scans staging area" folder on the Desktop, and deal with the scanned docs just like they used to on their local machines. This would eliminate the middle-step of transferring each document to the remote server via something like dropbox or whatever.

I did everything I was supposed to and was unable to get the Savin machines to connect to the FTP server. We lease our scanners, so I called up our technical rep and he dug into the problem with me. I had set everything up correctly, he said, but as it turns out (he did not know this beforehand) both of our machines have been configured to not allow connections to machines outside of our LAN.

Bottom line: I've been told that our two Savin machines have been programmed to be unable to connect to remote FTP servers. This strikes me as more of a "parental/admin control" option rather than a hard technical limitation. Is it true that these machines physically cannot connect to remote FTP servers? There must be some way to circumvent the "net nanny" that is preventing these machines from connecting to remote servers....right? I mean, they can send out email over port 80 to "remote machines"....why not ftp over port 21?

[jhalfhide]

Re: I've been told I cannot send scanned docs outside of my LAN via FTP. Is it true?

No limitation on server location, so long as the relevant ports are open on the client end. The machine has no way of knowing wether the server is remote or local so sounds like more of a lack of knowledge from your tech guy.


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[Synthohol]

Re: I've been told I cannot send scanned docs outside of my LAN via FTP. Is it true?

FWIW you can assign the FTP site port to whatever you want.
they would have to access it though as "ftp://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:port# then you can map it as a drive for the users, i find that better than having to open a web page everytime.

[rthonpm]

Re: I've been told I cannot send scanned docs outside of my LAN via FTP. Is it true?

I would really hope that your company isn't allowing an unauthenticated FTP server to be sitting out on the network since it's a big target from a security perspective. If you're going to use FTP, at this point for any business use SFTP is a better option since you don't have everything transmitting in the clear and you can control who accesses the server.

Does this 'external' server have FTP enabled on it? Is it part of your company network, but just not in your local office? Is it accessible via SMB? There's a lot of questions you need to involve your company IT with along with your service provider to get a real answer to your question. Networking isn't a one size fits all situation, especially when dealing with business networks and the regulatory requirements they may have to abide by. Get a contact in your IT department that your tech company can go to to get the information they each need to see if you're even looking at something that's possible.

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