Installing a Network Printer

A network printer is a hardware device that provides printing services to print clients without being directly cabled to a printer server. It has its own system name and IP address, and is connected directly to the network. Even though a network printer is not connected to a printer server, it is necessary to set up a printer server for it. The printer server provides queuing capabilities, filtering, and printing administration for the network printer.

Network printers use one or more special protocols that require a vendor-supplied printing program. The procedures to set up the vendor-supplied printing program can vary. If the printer does not come with vendor supplied support, the Solaris Print Manager may be used; it is strongly advised to use the print vendor supplied software when possible. See System Administration Guide, Volume II in the Solaris 7 System Administrator Collection for more information about vendor-supplied printing programs.

Terms used by Solaris Print Manager for network printer installation are:

• Destination (or network printer access name): The internal name of the printer node port that is used by the printer sub-system to access the printer. It is the name of the printer node, or the name of the printer node with a printer vendor port designation. Any printer vendor port designation is explicitly defined in the printer vendor documentation. It is printer specific. In the case where the printer is a printer-host device and a printer, the port designation is documented in the printer-host device documentation. The format is:

  printer_node_name

  or

  printer_node_name:port_designation

  Examples of network printer destination names are described below.

• Protocol: the over-the-wire protocol used to communicate with the printer. The printer vendor documentation supplies the information regarding the protocol to select. The Solaris Print Manager network printer support supplies both BSD Printer Protocol and raw TCP. Due to implementation variations, you may want to try both.

Selecting the Network Printer Destination Name

The print subsystem requires access information for the printer. This is the name that the subsystem uses when making the network connection to the printer. This name is supplied by the system administrator to the Solaris Print Manager Install Network Printer screen. It becomes part of the printer configuration database. The destination is the name of the printer node, sometimes qualified by a port name. Port designation varies across printer vendors. You will find information about port designation in the documentation that is provided by the printer vendor. The format of the printer access name is:

printer_node-name[:port_designation]

Example 1--Network Printer Destination Name With Port Designation (Number)

A common port designation with TCP is 9100. If the printer node name is pn1, and the printer vendor defines the port as 9100, then the network printer destination name is:

pn1:9100

Example 2--Network Printer Destination Name With Port Designation (Name)

When using the BSD protocol, the port designation may not be a number, but some name defined by the printer vendor, for example: xxx_parallel_1. If the printer node name is cardboard, then the printer access name is:

cardboard:xxx_parallel_1

Example 3--Network Printer Destination Name With No Port Designation

If there is no port designation, and the printer name is newspaper, then printer destination name is the printer name:

newspaper