Overview

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, a completely new one was rebuilt from the ground-up and now lives at Printers.lowell.local

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 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).

The current printer server will still remain throughout the transition, but will be retired at a later time. Currently mapped printers should continue working until their IP address is changed.

Changes

New Printer Server

The biggest change is a total rebuild of our Printer Server. The old one was experiencing reliability issues and interrupting work for users. The new server should be more reliable with a cleaner configuration.

The old printer server was LO-Printer.lowell.local

The new one is Printers.lowell.local

Why use a printer server?

When you add a printer via a printer server, your computer will communicate with and send the print job to the print server instead of directly to the printer. The printer server then passes the job onto the printer.

Connecting with a print server also allows you to receive updates to printer configuration or drivers when administrators update them on the server. Additionally, if the printer ever changes location or needs to be physically replaced, your connection via the printer server should remain the same.

Due to the reliability issues with LO-Printer, IT staff didn't always ask users to remap printers via this method. After the transition to the new Printers server, mapping via Printers.lowell.local will be the preferred method.

IP Addresses

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.

Connection Procedure

Lowell Staff were connecting to printers in a few different methods. The goal is for users to connect to printers in a consistent manner.

There are two main ways that a printer might currently be mapped on your device:

Via LO-Printer Server

This method means that print jobs will go through the LO-Printer server before going to the printer. 

On Windows, when you list your printers, you will see a name such as "xerox-hcps via LO-Printer.lowell.local" indicating the connection is to the printer server.

Directly Via IP

Although it is not preferred, if the printer server is having issues, a direct connection to the printer can potentially sidestep the problem. However, this limits the ability for administrators to make changes to printer configuration and printer drivers for you, because you will not receive these changes.

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.

What do I need to do?

If you need to avoid interruptions to printing at all costs

Contact Brooks (bvanburen@lowell.edu) to schedule a time to update your computer. We can get your computer changed ahead of time before the old printer server stops functioning. Certain days where interruptions are unacceptable can be avoided for making any changes.

If you're not too worried or rushed

Wait for Brooks to visit your building and he will update your printer connections on your devices. If you miss the day that Brooks visits, send him an email to find a time for him to stop by. You can also bring your laptop to the IT office and the changes can be made there.

If you're technically able

You can try updating your printer connections now. Remove printers that were added before, add the new connections via Printers.lowell.local, and verify that they are working smoothly for you. Please inform IT of any issues ASAP.