Requirements for network Printing in windows 10

With Windows 10 printing, you can easily configure and share printers across an entire network. After a printer is shared on a computer running Windows 10, you can then set up client computers running Windows 10 Windows 8 or windows server 2016 and 2013 to use that shared printer.

Requirements for Network Printing

The requirements for setting up printing on a Windows network include the following:

• At least one computer to act as the print server. If the print server is to manage many heavily used printers, the task of printing documents can use 100 percent of the computer’s processing or network capacity. This will slow down other services running on the computer. Therefore, Microsoft recommends using a dedicated print server if the server will be placed under a heavy load. The computer can M almost every Windows operating system, including the following:

1.  Windows Server 2016, which can handle a large number of connections, and supports Apple Macintosh and UNIX computers as well as Novell Netware clients.
2. Windows 10 which is limited to 10 concurrent connections from other computers for file and print services. It does not support Macintosh computers or NetWare clients but does support UNIX computers.

• Sufficient random access memory (RAM) to process documents. If a print server manages a large number of printers or many large documents, the server might require additional RAM beyond what Windows 10 or Wmdows Sewer 2016 requires for other tasks. If a print server does not have sufficient RAM for its workload, printing performance deteriorates. Given the modern prevalence of inexpensive memory, RAM is typically not an issue unless you expect a print server to be heavily utilized. Even having 512 MB of RAM beyond what the computer requires for other tasks should be sufficient.

• Sufficient disk space on the print server to ensure that the print server can store; documents that are sent to it until it sends the documents to the printer. This is critical when documents are large or likely to accumulate. For example, if 10 users send large documents to print at the same time, the print server must have enough disk space to hold all the documents until it can send them to the print device If there is not enough space to hold all the documents, users get error messages and cannot print. As with memory, hard disk space really becomes an issue only on heavily used print servers. Having an extra 2 GB to 10 GB of disk space (or, even better, moving the print queue to a spare hard disk) ensures that disk space does not become an issue when printing.

Important Printing Terms

Before you start setting up printers, you should be familiar with some important Wmdows 10 printing terms that will help you understand how the different printing components work together,


Logical printer The logical printer is the software configuration that is created in Windows 10 and is represented by an icon in the Printers And Faxes window. It controls the printer’s configuration and the way in which Windows sends documents to the printer.

Printer The printer is a hardware device that puts text or images on paper or on other print media. You will encounter two types of printers:

• A local printer is connected to a physical port on the print server. A logical printer created on the print server provides tools for managing and sharing the printer.
• A network interface printer is connected directly to the network via an internal network adapter.You create a logical printer on a print server that you can use to manage and share the printer

printer port The printer port is a software interface through which a computer communicates with a printer by means of a locally attached interface. For example, if a computer has a parallel port, the printer port configured in Windows might be named LPT 1. Windows 10 supports the following interfaces: line printer (LPT), COM, universal serial bus (USB) 1.1 and 2.0, iEEE 1594 (FireWire), and network-attached devices such as HP JetDirect and Intel NetPort.

Print server The print server is the computer that manages a printer on a network. The print server receives and processes documents from client computers. Note that any computer (a laptop or a desktop) can act as a print server.

Printer driver The printer driver is a file or set of files containing information that Windows 10  requires to convert print commands into a specific primer language, such as Adobe PostScript. This conversion makes it possible for a printer to print a document. A printer driver is specific to each printer model.

Print job A print job is a document that Windows has prepared for printing. Print jobs wait in a printer’s print queue until it is their turn to be printed. While a print job is waiting in the queue, users can manage or delete the print job.

Guidelines for Developing a Network-wide Printing Strategy

Before you set up network printing, develop a network-wide printing strategy to met: users’ printing needs without unnecessary duplication of resources or delays in printing.
Network Printing Environment Guidelines



Determine users’ printing requirements  Determine the number of users who print and the printing workload. For  example, 10people in a billing department who print invoices continually will have a larger printing workload and might require more printers and possibly more print servers than 10 software developers who do all their work online.

Determine company’s printing  requirements Determine the printing needs of your company,including the number and types of printers that are required. In addition, consider the type of workload that each printer will handle.Do not use a personal printer for network printing.

Determine the number of print servers required Determine the number of print servers that your network requires to handle the number and types of printers that your network will contain.

Determine where to locate printers  Determine where to put the printers so that it is easy for users to pick up their printed documents.Think about how the print servers will connect to the printers.Typically,it is more cost-effective to choose network interface printers than to locate print servers physically close to each printer.