[Geek] One for the printer gurus ...

[dancefloorlandmine]

We have what is technically referred to as a duff printer (old and battered HP 2100 which appears to keep playing up). The suggestion is to replace this with a nice shiny HP 2300. So far so good. However, I have a query regarding the networking of printers ...

1. At present the 2100 is connected to the network by way of a nice little JetDirect (HP 170X) box, out of which a nice traditional printer cable runs. It has been suggested that we buy a 2300N rather than the vanilla 2300. As I understood it, the JetDirect box serves the purpose of the "N" upgrade in any case, allowing direct network connection. Am I correct, and would there be any other advantage to the 2300N?

2. The proposed reason for getting the 2300N rather than the vanilla version is that this would allegedly make it possible to send print jobs even when our network server is down. (a) Is this correct? And (b) would this still be possible if using a 2300 via JetDirect rather than 2300N?

Thank you for your forbearance, and general generosity in wading through the above contorted mumblings.

Comments

[minusbat.livejournal.com]

Dunno about the 'N' bit, but using JetDirect you
can send jobs directly - assuming the client PC's are
set up to talk directly to the printer. You should
be able to do this with the existing setup in fact.

[drplokta]

The answer to all your questions is yes. For question 1 additionally, the 2300N has 48MB of RAM against 32MB on the 2300, and you'd use one less power socket. No other advantage that I can see. For question 2, you would need to set up the PCs to talk to the printer directly, which would mean installing the JetDirect client driver, rather than sharing the printer on the server. But subject to that, you should be able to print when the server is down wither on a 2300N or on a 2300 with an external JetDirect unit. (But note that a PC that is booted when the server is down probably won't be able to get an IP address from DHCP, and so won't talk to the network at all.)

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Err ... speaking as a professional muppet, rather than an IT bod, how does one set up a printer to talk directly? What is this JetDirect client driver of which you speak, oh wise one? And other such supplications ...

[drplokta]

The JetDirect driver should be on the software CD that came with your JetDirect, and you'll just need to install it on each PC. The 2300N will also come with a CD. Just shove the CD in the PC and it'll auto-run and bring up an install menu.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Cheers! Might have to go for the N, then (as the chance of finding the JetDirect CD itself is somewhat of a "looking for a needle in the wrong haystack" type challenge - I could go on about a lack of IT policy, no consistency in staffing, etc, etc, but I won't because LJ's servers aren't big enough for my rant ...)

[drplokta]

You should be able to download the drivers from the HP website if you can't find the CD.

[medains.livejournal.com]

1. Other advantage, the incoming spool of the 2300N is likely to be significantly larger than the 170X box (and using the jetdirect, the spool will probably be on it rather than on the actual printer).
Performance will be better, and it will be easier to diagnose problems.
It will probably use less power too ;)

2. Depends what kind of 'network server' you are referring to. Sounds like you can do that already with the Jetdirect.

I'm not a printer guru, but network printers are good(tm).

Another factor is continued driver support.. the 170X might get end-of-lined at some point, whereas the shiny new 2300N will likely be supported for a while.

[reverendjim.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the N versions of the HP printers effectively have JetDirect boxes pre-installed in them, just like network cards on a PC. You can consider you current JetDirect box as a sort of external network card that then just needs the printer cable to connect the last bit. There's no real difference between the two situations.

You may find some of the configuration options slightly better (i.e. it'll be newer and may tie in some extra printer settings) with the inbuilt 2300N but you should be fine with what you've got. As you've mentioned before that you don't have a lot of money around...

[vatine]

At a guess (this is even a wild guess), the jetDirect box speaks only the rlp protocol (descendant of the remote-printer protocol from BSD) and I'd guess the 2300N box speaks rlp and SMB. Thus, in one case, you need a printer queue on a single box to spool jobs off tyo the printer and in the second, the printer would show up as a share in the windows network. If this has any connection to reality, i don't know, but I do know that SMB-aware printers started showing up a while ago.

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

A few points.

IME the 2000 series of printers from HP is naff. I have 3 2200's here and they are all dodgy and crap. As opposed to most HP workgroup style printers which are tough as old boots and last for ever. I've found that the 2000 series is not much more reliable than the desktop models. How much would it cost you to upgrade to the 4000 series?

If you have a jetdirect box there really isn't all that much benefit in getting the N model. Its just a JD on a plug in option card. If I was buying new I'd always get the option card as it's more neat and tidy and probably cheaper. But as you are on a permanent tight budget there and already have the kit, I can't really see the value.

When talking about 'connecting direct' esentialy what a JD does (whether its built in or in a seperate box) is replace the printer cable with a network connection. So on the PC/Server you see a printer connected to IP port x.x.x.x (or whatever) rather than LPT1. Once that connection is established it works just like a local printer. Think of it like that (a virutal printer lead if you like) and it's easier to think through the different ways to set it up.

While it is certainly possible to set up all your client PC's to talk direct to the JD (which you can do with either the N model printer or a seperate JD box, they are the same thing really), I've never been a big fan of doing this. In essense you are making the network printer a local printer on all those PC's simultaneously, rather than making it a local printer on the server then sharing it from the server to the clients.

The server way of doing things is probably what you are doing already. This way you have a single point of adminsitration, control and spooling, rather than lots of local queues and settings on the individual PC's. e.g. if you want to control who is allowed to use a printer, staging it through the server lets you use NT authentication to do so, which you can't easily do if each client is treating it as a local printer. You can also get conflict issues with multiple PC's trying to send jobs at the same time, which is less likely to happen with a staging server as it's hard drive should have much more capacity for queueing than any JD box. Bear in mind though that print serving can be a pretty demanding job for a server as it typicaly involves streaming big lumps of data into and out of a page file from the network interface, not something I'd shove onto a flaky box or one that has lots of other traffic.

So in short, I wouldn't buy a 2300, I wouldn't get an option card if it cost any extra and I wouldn't worry about dirrect client connections in any event.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

[bow] Thank you for the advice. Unfortunately the 4000s (wonderful beasties that they are¹) seem to be in another price band entirely. [sniff]

The current 2100 is indeed effectively connected via the server - I have to admit that until I managed to get behind the filing cabinets, I did think it was simply connected via an unusually long parallel cable. Then I managed to follow the overlong patch cable back under the shelving and into the back of the patch cabinet. I don't like spaghetti any more.

The desire to have the direct connectivity option is the idea of the ahem person who has been causing various levels of stress and grief for the past several months. She wants to be able to print reports from the helpline PCs when the server is down. The fact that the server hasn't gone down for ages, and the only thing which has is her SQL database, suggests that she actually wants the ability to print from the emergency desktop based version when the main one is down. Maybe I'm just overly suspicious, and have read Macchiavelli too often ... but ...

On the other hand, as we don't actually have a central IT budget, and it will therefore effectively come from her team's budget (I'm damn well going to make sure it does), there's not a whole deal of caring here, provided it doesn't add too much to my workload. The only suspicion is that the direct printing might do so. Thank you sir, you have given me much to think on!

¹ I have one within wheelie-chair range of my desk, and it is in fact our office's main printer.

[thepaintedone.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't recomend mixing server staged and direct client setups. From your description I'd guess that once she has the facillity, she'll tend to use it all the time whether the server is up or not (users are like that). Having another device randomly dropping items into the local queue may not go down well with the print server. It all depends on the specific drivers, firmwares and software involved, but I'd tend to err on the side of it being a bad idea.

There are all sorts of clever technical solutions to this sort of issue, including printer pooling and Active Directory looking after printers for you, but frankly it'll probably just be easier to get her a cheap printer to attach directly to her PC. Stroppy users with funny printing requirements tend to be muchly pacified by this as they then feel they have personal control over thier printing. This of course is the key, once they have personal control they will tend to leave you alone. The IT control freak in me tends to twitch at this, but it will give you a quieter life which is usualy a better bet.

It is a more expensive option, cheap desktops (the HP 1200 series is decent) are more expensive to run per page than workgroup units and if she tries to stuff WG level volumes through it it'll die within two years (the paper feed will start pulling several sheets then stop working altogether, they all do this eventualy), but that'll come out of her stationary budget so it can easily be classified as SEP (Someone Else's Problem).

Just make sure that it's an exception that no-one else is going to want to have. I know let some managers and the Accounts people have thier own printers, but when I joined the company we had 35 desktop printer accross 43 staff. 30 odd broken printers later and god knows how much money on toners, they've all been moved to the likes of a 4000.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

a cheap printer to attach directly to her PC
[grin] If it would give me a quiet life, I'd staple the damn cable to her forehead. However, pleasurable though such an image is [pause for reflection], the problem is that she doesn't just want the printer for herself - it's for her team, and for reports to be printed from the helproom PCs as well. Yep, that means about ten PCs trying to access the same JetDirect box. Doesn't sound that smart to me, either.

Having had a chat to our support geezers (who were in a meeting today for another reason), they pointed out that it should be possible to print to any of the PC printers when the server is down, provided that the addressing is working. Problem solved.