Connecting a printer to the Earth Sciences network

Last revision May 26, 2005

Virtually all printers in the School are connected to the computer network so they can be shared, rather than being connected directly to a single computer. Printers must be connected to the wired network. Some printers come with a wireless adapter as well. Because wireless service at Stanford always uses temporary IP addresses on a separate network that is not directly visible to probes from the wired network, a printer connected to the wireless network would never be found on the network, except by wireless computers in the same area using the "Rendezvous" (or "Bonjour") technology from Apple.

Laser and ink-jet printers from Hewlett Packard are the most common types of printers on our network. In almost all cases, these printers use the PostScript page description language and use a generic printer driver with a simple printer description file that comes pre-installed on all computers. Many printers also accept jobs formatted in the HP PCL language. A few (some Epson printers come to mind) have their own proprietary page description language and require that special drivers be installed on every computer that will print to them.

Printing Protocols

Modern network printers are usually multi-protocol. They can be assigned TCP/IP addresses to advertise themselves as a Windows printer share, accept LPR print jobs from Unix or MacOS X workstations, or accept print jobs over a special TCP port via their own printer drivers installed on your PC. At the same time, they can be assigned an AppleTalk name and zone to accept AppleTalk print jobs from "Classic" Macintosh computers (and Unix or Windows systems with appropriate added software).

A few older Apple network printers still in use in the School only support the AppleTalk protocol. But Windows PCs and Unix workstations can still send print jobs to them by using a printer queue on pangea. Pangea has the appropriate software to re-send the print job to the printer via AppleTalk.

Very old printers that have only LocalTalk ports, not ethernet, are no longer supported in the School of Earth Sciences. Some of these are still on the network, equipped with a LocalTalk to Ethernet adapter. But those adapters work poorly on our network and often (say once per week) freeze up and require a power cycle to reset. It is best to connect such an old printer directly to a single computer, using the serial (Macintosh and Unix) or parallel (Windows PC) port. That computer can then share the printer on the network, if needed.

First Step-->

Comments?