Subject: JMP> Non-Network Ports in the Job MIB

From: Ron Bergman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 1997 08:28:00 -0700 (PDT)

Chris,

Now that some of the dust has settled regarding the comments from
the Munich IETF meeting, I thought it was a good time to discuss
some of the conclusions reached at the PWG meeting in Redmond.

Everyone was quite surprised regarding the issue of "lack of support
for non-networked ports" in the Job Monitoring MIB.  It was mutually
agreed in the meeting that the Job MIB would apply to all jobs
processed by the printer regardless of the received port.  Some
implementations may not be able to support this requirement, but
they should be considered "non-conforming".  (Of the companies
currently planning to implement the Job MIB, none indicated that
jobs from non-networked ports would be ignored.) 

The only current prototype, from IBM, does include all ports supported
by the printer.  

One problem with jobs received on serial or parallel ports is the issue
of job boundaries.  Most jobs today received on these ports do not
indicate the start and end of the job.  The ports simply rely on a
timeout to detect the end of the job.  (Note that there are exceptions
to this rule, such as print jobs received using PJL.)  The only
consequence, in this case, is that several jobs may be reported as
one.  

For a further discussion relative to ports and the Printer MIB, see
the excellent discussion from Bill Wagner dated August 3, 1997 "Re:
JMP> ISSUE from Chris: Submitting via serial/parallel ports".

	Ron Bergman
	Dataproducts Corp.