SunLink Server printing offers the following features:
In SunLink Server terminology, a shared printer queue is the mechanism through which a collection of printer devices is accessed by LAN users with appropriate permissions. A print device is the actual hardware that produces printed output. Print devices can be connected directly to the server (via serial or parallel port), to the network (via a network adapter card), or to a client computer on the network.
The Solaris operating system, which your SunLink Server computer runs, provides LP Printer functionality which mediates between the SunLink Server system, which sends clients' print requests to the LP service, and the print devices to which the LP service directs the requests.
In Windows NT terminology, a printer is the software interface between the operating system and the print device. The printer defines where the document will go before it reaches the print device (to a local port, to a file, or to a network print share), when it will go, and various other aspects of the printing process.
In SunLink Server terminology, the shared printer queue is the software interface between the application and the print device. When you administer a SunLink Server print server from Windows NT, a "printer" actually represents a shared printer queue.
A printer driver is a program that converts graphics commands into a specific printer language, such as PostScript or PCL. When you add a printer, you are installing a printer driver and making the printer (shared printer queue) available on the network by sharing it.
A print server is the computer that receives documents from clients.
Spooling is the process of writing the contents of a document to a file on disk. This file is called a spool file .
The SunLink Server program supports all of the printer devices that are supported by the local spooling system. The local spooling system is the process that runs on the SunLink Server computer's Solaris system, which handles system printing.
Network-interface print devices have their own network cards; they need not be physically connected to a print server because they are connected directly to the network.
The SunLink Server program supports true network printing. When Windows NT and Windows 95 clients connect to a correctly configured SunLink Server print server, the printer driver is automatically installed on the client computer.
If you install a newer or different printer driver on a SunLink Server computer or a Windows NT or Windows 95 client computer, you must update the printer driver manually to have the new version copied on to your computer. You remove and then add the printer to download the printer driver automatically.
When you use a SunLink Server computer for both file- and print-sharing, file operations have negligible impact on printers that are attached directly to the server; parallel and serial ports are always the greater bottlenecks. A dedicated print server may be desirable if a server is required to manage many frequently used printers.
The decision to combine print and file servers may depend on security concerns. While printers always should be available to users, you may want to restrict physical access to the servers by keeping them in secured rooms.