Intermate 100 manual Load Balancing Pool, Determining the order of values to enter

[Logical Printers 1-8]: Load Balancing Pool

20.3. Load Balancing Pool

This parameter is only used when the target printer for a logical printer definition is set to “pool”. It specifies the already defined network target printers which are to be included in the load bal- ancing pool.

If you choose “pool” as the target printer, but leave the “load balancing pool” field blank, print jobs sent to the logical printer in question will be discarded and a message will be generated in the System Log.

The values to enter from the set [0, 1, 2, 3, 4] refer to the val- ues in round brackets on the pull-down menu for “Target Printer” [page 152]. You can enter any combination, assuming that the combination you choose only includes printers with fully equivalent functionality.

Listed network destinations not having a valid IP host address configured will be excluded from the pool.

If none of the network destinations listed in the pool have been configured with a valid IP address, the local port (0) will be used—provided that you are not using a stand-alone setup; otherwise the print server will disregard connection attempts from the print sources.

Determining the order of values to enter

The order in which the target printer numbers are listed deter- mines priorities. In other words, the order of the list determines the order in which the Intermate1xx tests to see where a job should be sent.

Prioritizing is only activated in situations where two or more tar- get printers in the load balancing pool are idle.

If all output ports in the load balancing pool are busy, a new incoming job will be destined to the queue in the pool that first becomes idle regardless of the priority.’

It is often a good idea to put the least heavily used printers at the start of the list.

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