Will NDPS Reduce Network Printing Nightmares?

By James Drews  Wouldn't it be great if there was a better way to track down network printing problems--like one that empowered the user to solve most problems before calling the helpdesk. Enter Novell Distributed Print Services (NDPS), a print architecture designed to make printing easier and more reliable. NDPS is a next-generation print-services technology produced by Novell, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Xerox Corp. in a cooperative venture. It is designed to make users' and administrators' lives easier through a combination of software and hardware. One key piece of this new technology is the bidirectional communication and feedback between the user and the printer. Other features include a central point of administration, easier pri nter setup, automatic driver download, configurable event notification and new job-scheduling options. In Network Computing's University of Wisconsin-Madison lab, we tested NDPS to see if it will reduce network printing nightmares. NDPS in Action Previously, when a new printer was installed on the network, an administrator needed to create and maintain three separate objects in the NDS tree: the print queue, the print server and the printer. With NDPS, the administrator simply needs to create a single print object. It doesn't matter who manufactures the printer--all configuration is accomplished via the same administration program in Novell's NWAdmin utility. Administrators create objects, called "printer agents," that let NDPS-enabled clients print directly to the printer. The printer agent typically is an NLM that runs on a NetWare/IntranetWare server. To save administrators even this small amount of work, NDPS-enabled printers can set themselves up as "public-access" printers. Publi c-access printers sit on the network and register themselves with an NDPS broker. Once a printer is registered with the broker agent, any network user can locate and use that printer. Public-access printers are different than NDPS printer objects that are created in the NDS tree in one major respect: no access control. However, if an administrator wants to restrict access to a printer, the public-access printer can be turned into a controlled printer simply by creating the corresponding NDS object in the tree. The process works well, we found, but it took a significant amount of time to search our network and obtain printer information from all of our JetDirect interface cards. From the NDPS object in NWAdmin, an administrator can set up, check the status of and control printers via the NDPS APIs provided by Novell. To accomplish this unified management experience, each printer vendor will need to supply NWAdmin snap-in DLLs (Dynamic Link Libraries) to control its printers. Users and administrations will n o longer have to learn several different printer utilities to configure printers. Directory Integration With NDPS' bidirectional feedback, administrators can assign specific users to the role of operator or manager for a given printer or group of printers. The feedback, or notifications, can be set based on the user's role. NDPS supports three notification methods: log file entry, pop-up message and e-mail via GroupWise. For example, an administrator can set up an NDPS object to notify a printer operator when a paper jam occurs or a toner cartridge is empty. You can choose from 18 different job notifications and 20 printer notifications (see "Print Job Events" and "Printer Events" below and right).

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