0

I have a printer that is connected via the port 9100 aka AppSocket aka JetDirect protocol, which is basically no protocol at all but everything that is sent to that port is interpreted as print data. However, when a second connection is opened, the printer accepts it even though it is still busy but then ignores its content.

I'd rather not use CUPS because it is quite slow. Is there a daemon that can take those connections and then relay them one after the other?

AndreKR
  • 523
  • 1
  • 3
  • 16

1 Answers1

1

In what why do you say CUPS is slow? We've found that it works quite well if you're using a driver that doesn't try to have the printer CPU do the rendering.

For instance, the PCL drivers work MUCH faster than PostScript drivers in our HP LaserJet environment.

CUPS is VERY ubiquitous in the Linux space and you'll have difficulty finding a distro that doesn't use it.

Magellan
  • 4,431
  • 3
  • 29
  • 53
  • Using the *raw* driver to send pre-generated PCL directly to the printer, I get response times around 4 s which is far too long. It seems that there is some problem with CUPS' socket backend: http://pastebin.com/NmDGss1A When I send it to the printer using `netcat` I get about 300 ms which is still acceptable. – AndreKR Mar 29 '12 at 04:21
  • You think 4 seconds is unacceptable for a printer job? – Lucas Kauffman Mar 29 '12 at 07:15
  • The slowest part of the printer is, well the actual printing. The speed of the network connection through a print server hardly seems important. – Rob Moir Mar 29 '12 at 07:50
  • It's a label printer that prints and dispenses the label in under half a second, 4 seconds more for nothing make a huge difference. – AndreKR Mar 29 '12 at 08:49
  • You're not going to be happy with any of the print server daemons available. Anyone who's doing that is writing their own printer management stack into their hardware. If you want any better answers, you're probably going to need to describe exactly WHAT you're doing with this. – Magellan Mar 29 '12 at 15:56
  • Two computers with barcode scanners, hooked up to a server hooked up to a label printer. After scanning an item a PHP website is generating PCL code and sending it to the printer which dispenses a label for that item as fast as possible. If the two print jobs overlap, one is lost. Is that what you wanted to know? – AndreKR Mar 30 '12 at 05:35