Internet Printing May Not Work on a Network Address Translation Server

After you share a printer on a Windows 2000-based server that is also running Network Address Translation (NAT) for communication with the Internet, attempting to connect to the server by using an http://servername/printers command may result in the following error message in the browser:

This behavior can occur if the File and Printer Sharing feature is not enabled on the external adapter for the computer that is running NAT. This can be a security consideration, because NAT does not allow you to disable ports on the external adapter. You may want instead to use a proxy or a separate Internet print server if this is an unacceptable configuration and you want to limit the Server Message Block (SMB) traffic to the computer.

To enable the File and Printer Sharing feature for Microsoft networks on the external adapter:

1. Right-click My Network Places, and then click Properties.
2. Right-click the external connection, and then click Properties.
3. Click to select the File and Printer Sharing for Microsoft Networks check box, and then click OK.

Microsoft has confirmed that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at the beginning of this article.