The deployment scenarios are confined to the wireless-based LAN network because iOS devices can only communicate over the wireless medium for the printer discovery and print services. The deployment scenario varies based on how wireless is configured in the organization. The preferred scenario is to deploy iPrint’s AirPrint mDNS services led by the router, which has the ability to route the mDNS packets (link local Bonjour advertisement) into the various wireless sub networks in the organization. See Figure 7-1.
Wireless routers span across multiple wired networks, and have hot spots on every network. The mDNS service advertises printers on the wireless network, and the iOS device builds a list of available print services by listening to these advertisements. AirPrint client's users can select a target printer from the received list of advertised printers.
Figure 7-1 Logical Network Segment Configuration
In this configuration, the mDNS advertisement is instantly injected into the network. In the above configuration, printer 'A' is visible to VLAN 100 wireless users, and printer 'B' is visible to VLAN200 wireless users. The printers are not visible across the VLANs.