Novell® Distributed Print Services® (NDPS®) is the result of a development effort by Novell, Hewlett-Packard*, and Xerox*. NDPS offers important improvements over Novell's legacy queue-based print service architecture. It was designed to handle the increased complexity of managing modern printers in a network environment and to exploit the new functionality offered by these printers. The power and versatility of NDPS will help you get the most out of your printing resources, whether you're in a small workgroup or an enterprise-wide system.
NDPS is fully compatible with your existing queue-based printing resources, which means that you can make the transition from your legacy printing setup gradually.
The advantages of using NDPS will become increasingly apparent as you begin the transition process. Queue-based print services are a challenge to manage and to use. To install a printer on the network using queue-based technology, the system administrator must create a Print Queue, Print Server, and Printer object, link them together, and then manage them for each printer on the network. To print, users must install the specific printer drivers, capture a port to that printer, and then wait for their print jobs to be sent and queued to the printer. While this complicated system works well, it is time-consuming, and troubleshooting printing problems can be tedious. NDPS eliminates many of these complications while enhancing the overall versatility of your printing environment.
For more information, you should view the multimedia Introduction to NDPS that can be accessed from the main browser view for the NetWare® 5TM documentation set.