Subject: RE: IPP> What is it we really need?

From: Babak Jahromi <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 6 Jan 1997 13:57:56 -0800

>----------
>From: 	Alex Bochannek[SMTP:[email-masked]]
>
>Well, I think it became quite clear from Angelo's email, that the
>largest number of implementors (the folks who write the printer code)
>will most likely not have the option of using anything even close to a
>"stock HTTP server". They probably have better tools to write code
>straight to a socket API than to their own HTTP server
>implementation. And I can tell you from very recent experience that
>printing directly to a printer, circumventing the intermediate step of
>a print server, is not only something that small shops do since at a
>certain point, print severs just don't scale anymore.

How can the squeezed, embedded server code in a printer box ever be a
match for the kind of service a "print server implemented on a computer"
can provide? We just saw an example of why a print server trapped inside
a printer box can never match a print server inside a computer: The
"printer" guys have to laboriously write ancient C code on top of TCP,
while the "computer" guys have lavish tools and technology, like ISAPI,
ActiveX, Java, Denali, etc. available on their "computer" platform.

If anyone has solved a scaling problems with an NT 4.0 print server and
has got a better performance by removing the server and routing the
clients directly to the same old printer box, please send me the case
study. 

Babak

---

From: Keith Moore <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 06 Jan 1997 20:45:12 -0500

> ActiveX, Java, Denali, etc. available on their "computer" platform.

Sounds like the printer guys have it easier in some ways.  

The more layers there are, the more things that can fail, the harder
they are to diagnose, the less portable the result, etc.

If I can write a lpr server in 1000 lines of C code, why in the 
world should I care about these other things, at least for the purpose 
of printing?

Agreed that a print server implemented on a computer probably still
has some advantages...but the main reasons are that it has a lot
of secondary storage and a flexible authentication/authorization system
that can easily be shared among several applications.

Keith