In this video from ITFreeTraining I will look
at printer pooling. Printer pooling is the
process of connecting many physical printers
to the one printer queue. This is generally
required when a high volume of output is needed
from the one printer queue, more output then
one single physical printer could provide.
Let’s have a closer look.
Consider that you have a typical printer queue.
Normally this printer queue would be connected
to the physical printer, otherwise known in
Windows terminology as a Print Device. Printer
pooling allows one printer queue to be connected
to 2 or more physical printers.
Consider that you have configured a printer
in Windows. There are 3 physical printers
on the network. You enable printer pooling
so the one printer queue is connected to all
3 printers. If 3 documents were printed one
after the other, you can see that the documents
would be divided up between the 3 physical
printers.
Printer pooling is good in certain situations.
For example, if you have a student lab where
there are a lot of computers and a number
of shared physical printers. This allows the
user to print their documents and not worry
about which printer is currently in use. Since
the printers are in the same location, it
is not difficult for the student to check
each printer and locate their print job assuming
you place the physical printers together.
Printer pooling works like this. The first
available physical printer gets the print
job. This is done in a round robin fashion,
so it is not true load balancing. In other
words, the size of the print job is not considered
when deciding which physical printer to send
it to.
The physical printers also need to be the
same type. This is because printer pooling
uses the same device driver. It is best to
always use physical printers of the same model
from a single manufacturer. If you have different
physical printers, you may get unexpected
results.
Configuring printer pooling is simple. To
enable it, first open the control panel and
select “View devices and printers”. Once
devices and printers is open, right click
on a printer and select the option “Printer
Properties”.
Once the properties have opened, select the
ports tab. Notice that only one port can be
selected at one time. To enable printer pooling,
tick the option at the bottom of the screen
“enable printer pooling”.
Once the option is enabled, you can now select
multiple ports. Notice that the ports do not
have to be the same. For example, you can
have one printer connected using the USB and
the anther over the network. The important
point to remember is that the printers that
are connected by each port are physically
the same. That is, from the same manufacturer
and the same model.
If the port that you require is not visible,
press the button “Add Port”. For example,
if you have network printers you may need
to add additional network ports. Notice also
the settings below this. Like the printer driver,
all physical printers in the printer pool
need to share the same settings.
Well that covers it for printer pooling. You
can see that it is simple to set up and use.
I hope you found this video from ITFreeTraining
useful and I look forward to seeing you in
other videos from us. Thanks and see you next
time.
