NetWare 5 supports existing network-direct printers and hardware queue servers produced by various manufacturers. These devices either connect to a printer and then to the network or are installed in a port at the printer.

In many cases, these devices offer a fast, effective, low-cost printing solution in NetWare 5 as well as NetWare 3 environments.

Typically, these print devices are shipped with their own installation utilities. The manufacturer's utilities configure the device to recognize network print components and to communicate with the network. To effectively use network-direct print devices in a NetWare 5 environment, you will need to know the manufacturer's procedures for installing the specific device that you are using.

Many of these devices can be configured to run in either remote printer mode or queue server mode, as described in the following sections.

Figure 14
Network-Direct Print Devices Running on Same Network with Printers Attached to a Workstation and a NetWare Server

In this mode, the device functions in a way similar to a workstation running the NetWare 5 NPRINTER or the NetWare 3 RPRINTER. Devices configured for remote printer mode are controlled by a NetWare print server.

By using this mode, you are NDS-aware and will also get notification and other functionality available through NetWare Administrator. These advantages are generally not available in queue server mode described in the next section.

Devices running in this mode under NetWare 5 run considerably faster than they did under NetWare 3. The increased speed and flexibility offered with NetWare 5 makes remote printer mode a very effective way of providing network printing with these devices.

Queue Server Mode

In this mode, the hardware print server directly accesses the print queue using NetWare Core Protocol^TM calls. In NetWare 3, this mode was faster than remote printer mode, but the improved performance of the NetWare 5 PSERVER has minimized this distinction.

Queues created in the bindery context can be seen by both NDS^TM and bindery users, so both types of users can access these hardware print servers.

Network-direct print devices developed before NDS are designed to work well with the NetWare bindery. When used in queue service mode, some of these products present the following set of common issues of concern to the network administrator within a NetWare 5 environment.

• Some network-direct print devices and their installation programs are designed to look in the bindery for network printing information. In order for these devices to see binderies and queues, they must be in the same bindery context as these printers and queues.

• The queue's volume must be located on the same server as the queue.

• Queues serviced by network-direct printers must be created in the bindery context where the queue server is defined. The bindery context tells the NetWare server which NDS objects should be visible as bindery information.

• Queue users should be in the same bindery context as the queue.

• In NetWare 3, print server configuration files for bindery printers are located in the SYS:SYSTEM directory. In NetWare 5, these files have been replaced by attributes of the print server. Because most network-direct print devices are designed to access information from the bindery and are not NDS aware, you must create print device configurations in the bindery emulation mode of NetWare Administrator in order for the configuration files these devices require to be created.

• Some of these direct-connect devices need to be configured within the 16 printer limitation for NetWare 3 print servers.

  When using these devices in remote printer mode, you should reserve printer slots 0-15 for them.

• NetWare 3 created the group EVERYONE by default. Some of the network-direct print devices assume that this group exists in NetWare 5. For these devices, make sure that group EVERYONE is a user of the affected queue. You may need to create this group in the context where the printer is defined before the device will be able to communicate with the network.

• Some network-direct devices require a running print server before you can configure for remote-printer mode.

  Because the communication protocol between print servers and network-direct devices running in remote printer mode have not changed since NetWare 3, the running print server can be a NetWare 5 print server.

• Some of the utilities provided with these print devices can only be operated with the SUPERVISOR right and do not recognize Supervisor equivalents. You will need to log in as SUPERVISOR in bindery mode rather than logging in as ADMIN in Directory Services mode.

• Some devices include a remote printer configuration utility that requires you to complete duplicate configuration steps. In such cases, you should first define the remote printer in the NetWare Administrator utility, and then define the printer again using the third party utility.

  As a result of these duplicate steps, you may end up with unused NetWare 3 printer configuration files on the NetWare 5 server.