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Upgrading and Repairing Networks |
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Chapter 40. Network Printing ProtocolsSOME OF THE MAIN TOPICS IN THIS CHAPTER ARE
The most basic functions provided by a LAN are the file and print services. A print server is a computer or a networked device that has one or more physical printers attached and that accepts data for printing from other computers. You can learn more about print servers in the next chapter. A parallel port, USB port, or even FireWire (IEEE 1394, also called iLink) port can be used to directly connect a printer to a single computer. The parallel port provides a high-speed connection on a set of wires used exclusively by the printer and the computer for this communication path. USB and FireWire provide much faster communication links between the computer and the printer. Most small-scale printers today support both parallel connections and USB connections. Larger printers intended for enterprise environments also include network adapters, so you can access them from multiple clients on the network without having to send a print job through a server that is directly connected to the printer. Instead, the printer is just like another member of the network. Tip When you have a few hundred or thousand (or many more) employees, it is just not economically feasible to give each user a printer. In these large environments, a server is often dedicated to the sole task of processing print jobs. You could audit the print jobs to determine who was making use of the printer, among other features. Now, configuring a client to use a printer directly connected to the network is often a better, less expensive way of providing print services to clients. This doesn't mean that you have to choose one or the other. You can have networked printers, as well as printers connected to computers on the network at the same time. Most networked printers also support logging their activity to a syslog daemon. That is, they can send their operational and auditing information to a syslog daemon running on another Unix/Linux computer, and thus provide you, to some degree, an audit trail as well as report errors. Windows servers can record printing events in the system error log files for printers that are connected to the server, which you can view using the Event Viewer. You can also use Windows server computers to make a connection to networked printers, acting as a gateway for clients. In this manner, the Windows error logs can also record information about print jobs for the networked printers they manage. In anything but a very small network, you will also find that it is more efficient to connect a printer to the network, instead of a computer. This can be done in two ways: purchase a printer that comes with a network connection (such as the HP Jetdirect external print server), or use a small print server device that connects one or more printers to the network. In this chapter, we'll look primarily at the protocols used to communicate with a printer, or a print server, to exchange data and command information. 
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