Network Printing in Windows
Network Printing in Windows
Printing on a windows network is mater of installing a printer on the system that is to function as
the print server and then create printer share.
Windows printing is based on the concept of a logical printer, which is realized by the
installation of a printer driver on both client and server.
A logical printer is the software entity created when you install a printer driver on windows
computer using control panel.
Application sends print job to a logical printer, then it sends or relays to the physical printing
device.
In windows network printing architecture, both the client and server system have a logical printer
installed.
The logical printer points to the physical printer using either a parallel or serial port or custom
port created by an external print server.
The client system loads printer driver. Printer driver consist of three components.
The print graphics driver provides image rendering and management services.
The the windows GDI (graphical device interface) calls API, when an application
prints a documents.
The printer interface driver provides the configuration interface.
The postscript printer description or mini driver provides the device specific
configuration parameter for the printer
Through GDI, the application running on the client system creates an output file containing API
calls to the printer driver using the Devoice Driver Interface (DDI). This output file called DDI
journal file.
The spooler on the client system receives the DDI journal file and stores it in the spool directory
until the print processor can service it.
The print processor receives the DDI journal file from the spooler and processes it to create a
print job file using the format specified in the logical printer’s properties dialog box. Then output
is sent to the server.
The print router retrieves the job from the client spooler locates the printer for which it is
intended, and transmits over the network to the spooler on the print server. The print router is
also responsible for copying the printer drives from the print server.
The server spooler assigns a priority to the job and tracks its progress. The print monitor on the
server retrieves the print job file from the spooler and sends it to the parallel or serial or any
other port associated with printer share.
Once the print job file is processed by printer, the print monitor sends a verification message to
the client system, about job’s completion.
Then spooler deletes the job from the queue. The print monitor is responsible for handling errors
generated by the printer and resubmitting spooled jobs that have to be reprinted due to an error.
A print spooler is software that intercepts a print job on its way from the application to the
printer, and sends it to a print queue.
A print queue is a buffer where the print job is held until the printer is ready for it.
1. An application formats its document data into a form the printer can use, and sends it out.
2. The computer’s redirector sends the data onto the network, where it travels to the print
server computer.
3. The print-spooler software on the print server computer places the data in a print queue
on the server.
4. The print queue stores the data until the printer is free to print it.
Print queues generally use RAM for storage because it can move data faster than a hard
disk can.
However, if numerous documents are sent to the printer at once and the queue overflows,
the overflow documents will be sent to the print server’s hard disk to wait their turn in the
queue.
Printer connections:
2. Workstation connections: