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Guidelines for New Printers

For users and departments within Academic Support,when you acquire a new printer, there are basically three steps in the process:

  1. Choose your printer.
  2. Register printer on the campus network.
  3. Create a print queue for your printer.

Selecting a Printer

IST provides support for getting your print-outs from your workstation to the printer of your choice. Although almost any printer can be made to print via our print servers, some printers are much easier to configure, and work more efficiently, than other printers. One of the things that you can do to make our job easier and to improve your satisfaction with the printed output, is to choose a printer that is compatible with our print servers.

Some departments have provided personal printers for some of their staff. These printers are connected to one workstation only, and for security reasons, are not shared. This means that they do not use our print servers, and other users do not have access to these personal printers.

For shared use, you need to purchase a printer with a network interface. Many departments purchase Hewlett-Packard printers. If you do so, please ensure that it is supported by the HP Universal Print Driver - PostScript . If you decide to purchase a printer from a different manufacturer, it is very important that the print driver for it does NOT use host-based printing. Host-based printing is a way to reduce the cost of a printer by having the host computer perform the intricacies of creating the raster image which produces the text or graphics which appears on the paper. This rasterization is quite CPU-intensive and puts quite a load on the host computer (print server), which can result in slow printing for everyone.

Registering with Domain Name Services

Before any device can be used on the network, it must be given a name. This step is usually referred to either as 'Registering for DNS' or 'Obtaining an IP address'. There are conventions regarding naming of printers when registering them for network access. At http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/AcademicSupportHostnames.html is a list of Academic Support departments and preferred abbreviations. Although the table was originally created for use when naming workstations, it has proven to be very useful for other departmentally-related objects. For instance, suppose department 'Info Systems & Technology' purchases a new HP LaserJet 4300 to be used in room MC1049A. The DNS name for the new printer would be ist-mc1049a. This tells us department (ist-), and the location of the printer (MC1049A). The brand and model of the printer should not be part of the DNS name, although they should be included with the DNS entry for the device. If more than one printing device is located in a room, the DNS name could be something like ist-mc1049a-colour or ist-mc1049a-plotter.

Although the location of the printer is preferred in the DNS name of the printer, sometimes a printer is better described by function.  In this case, it is acceptable to name the printer by its function.  For example, Health Services has a printer for use by the receptionists, so that printer is known as hs-Reception.

To register your printer, you must submit a request. The preferred method is to connect to https://ist.uwaterloo.ca/request , choose "IST - IP Requests and Changes" from the pull-down list, then click on "Create a New Request". On the form that appears, supply the required information. In the space for 'Operating System' enter "printer". Click "Submit Request". This request will be directed to the hostmaster who will create the DNS entry for your printer. If the printer is moved to a different room you need to update the DNS entry for the printer.

Creating a Print Queue

On our virtual Windows print server (printsrv) there is a print queue for every networked printer in Academic Support. The name of the print queue should be the same as the DNS name of the printer. This is a change from the previous naming convention, so you may see printers whose print queue name bears little similarity to its DNS name. We now require that the print queue name be the same as the DNS name.

To have a print queue created, you must submit a request. The preferred method is to connect to https://ist.uwaterloo.ca/request , choose "IST - Windows Print Queue" from the pull-down list, then click on "Create a New Request". On the form that appears, supply the required information, then click "Submit Request". This request will be directed to one of the Windows Server Support people who will create the print queue for your printer. Before a Windows Server Support person can create a print queue, the printer must be powered on and plugged into the network, and must respond to a 'ping' command directed to the DNS name registered in the previous step. If the printer is moved to a different room you need to update the DNS entry for the printer, then update the print queue name.

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