Black Box LE3700A-R2 manual NetWare, Tcp/Ip

ETHERNET PRINT SERVER

5.1 NetWare

NetWare allows any networked node (a “client,” usually a PC) to access another node (a fileserver) as if it were locally attached. You can use hard disks, printers, and other devices as if they were directly attached to the client station. You can assign access rights, passwords, and privileges to prevent unauthorized use of the file server’s resources.

File servers are essential to the NetWare concept, and the system cannot function without at least one file server on the network. Users typically have to log into a file server to use the NetWare function. The file servers also provide print spooling for the clients—they will accept print jobs and hold them locally until the print resource is available to print the job. In this case, the EPS appears as a print resource, and will occasionally contact the file servers on the network to see if they have jobs that the EPS can service.

Each file server that needs to use the EPS’s print services must be configured with a print queue that the EPS can service. Users then send their print requests to the file server’s print queue, and the jobs are spooled until the EPS prints them. Since the file server controls the queue, all NetWare access restrictions and permissions are enforced, and only jobs that are privileged to use the EPS are permitted to do so. You can enforce different methods of queueing priority on the file server, and the EPS requires no knowledge of them. Some options are passed to the EPS (such as number of copies to print, banner page, etc.) and those are handled locally by the EPS.

The EPS services the NetWare hosts in two steps. Every minute, it sends a broadcast to try to locate all the file servers on the network. Also, it will contact each file server at least once per minute to see if there are any pending jobs that it can service. If there are no NetWare-enabled services on the EPS, the EPS will not contact the file servers, and the EPS will not broadcast to find the available servers.

5.2 TCP/IP

The TCP/IP protocol provides a guaranteed data stream between two hosts, but does not specify what is carried in the stream and how it should be handled. Various other applications and protocols use TCP/IP, so the sending and receiving hosts must agree on how certain connections will be treated. The interpretation done on any particular stream is usually based on which “port” the connection is made to. For example, a connection to TCP/IP port 511 means that the sender wants to send an LPR print stream to the receiver.

32