Allowing a Pitney Bowes franking machine and PC Meter software to access the internet

Summary

How to allow a franking machine or PC meter software to connect to its server

Problem

The franking machine, used to mark envelopes with pre-paid software, does not support going through the Smoothwall proxy. This is because it does not tell the proxy the full URL it is trying to access. The software also ignores the settings in its configuration and will still try to use the proxy if the client machine has proxy settings configured in Internet Explorer.

Solution

    1. Allow direct access on ports 80 and 443 to the following Destination IPs (Please check with the provider for any updated IP address information.):
      • 23.67.0.96
      • 199.231.44.31
      • 193.242.224.4
      • 23.52.48.96
      • 199.231.44.30
      • 199.231.45.38

If you are using our Secure Web Gateway or Software SWG (previously known as Network Guardian) with your own local firewall, these will need to be configured within the firewall outgoing port configuration on your local firewall.

If you are using our Unified Threat Management product, the outgoing port rules can be configured under Network > Outgoing > Ports where you can configure a rule containing these destination IPs with the port rule of either Allow All, Basic Services or a custom rule of your own configuration.

  1. Add the IP addresses to a destination exception rule in Guardian. This can be configured under Guardian > Web filter > Exceptions > Manage destination exceptions section.
  2. When the end user needs to use the franking machine, they will need to remove the proxy settings from their browser configuration. They will then need to close and restart the PC Meter software.