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You may or may not be familiar with intermittent problems with computers communicating with printers on Mars Hill. This seemed largely due to our old Printer server that may have accumulated misconfigurations over time that were too difficult to unravel. Instead of investing the time to "fix" the current server, it has been rebuilt a completely new one was rebuilt from the ground-up and now lives at Printers.lowell.local

The procedures for connecting to printers will be changing. A refreshed printer server has been created for enhanced reliability. The names for printers have also been updated for better standardization. Some printers will be getting their IP addresses updated to be on our new Printers VLAN for improved security and network performance.

Since the printers are getting all of this attention, we are trying to hit more birds with the same stone by improving the naming convention for printers and updating IP addresses as needed.

These changes mean All of these changes will mean that printers will need to be removed and re-added via the new procedures on your devices. Brooks from IT will be visiting buildings to help everyone update their printer connections; this process should take about 5-10 minutes per person. If you have concerns about interruptions to your work or scheduled tasks / events, please inform Brooks from IT (bvanburen@lowell.edu and it@lowell.edu).

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A new Printers VLAN has been created (VLAN 111) which can enhance security and network reliability for printers. Some of the existing printers will need to have their IP addresses updated, which may break the connection for any users that are connected directly to these printers via IP.

Printers create a lot of "noise" on the network. By keeping them in their own VLAN, it can greatly reduce network congestion and improve reliability.

Printer Names

The convention for printer naming has been better standardized where the first portion is the building, and the second portion indicates the specific printer.

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Please refer to Adding a Printer for detailed and updated instructions on connecting to printers.

Documentation Updates

Printer documentation on Confluence has been cleaned up, fleshed out, and improved. In particular, the Printers and Adding a Printer pages were updated.

Another recent addition to the documentation was Large Print Requests, with instructions for how to submit requests for large format prints.

Please share your feedback on documentation with IT@lowell.edu or by leaving a comment on the relevant page. Updating documentation can be time-consuming, but our goal is to have documentation that is helpful for staff and answers more questions than it creates. We will continue making incremental improvements over time. Let us know if you think there are pages that should exist on specific topics.

Change Summary Table

Some printers were not mapped on the old printer server. The IP addresses will be updated a building at a time in the coming weeks.

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