What affects printer transfer times?

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Cicero

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This is probably a stupid question, but I'd like to know whats going on.

In my office we have an Ethernet cabled HP printer, which is shared on our network amongst a handful of people.

I recently got a new PC, its much better than the rest of the guys machines, loads of ram, ssd etc.

When I print from my PC, its virtually instant regardless of what I'm printing. When the others print, it can take up to probably 45s or more for the printer to even shows signs of printing. It takes an age.

Why the differences? Does PC speed make a difference?
 
Cicero said:
This is probably a stupid question, but I'd like to know whats going on.

In my office we have an Ethernet cabled HP printer, which is shared on our network amongst a handful of people.

I recently got a new PC, its much better than the rest of the guys machines, loads of ram, ssd etc.

When I print from my PC, its virtually instant regardless of what I'm printing. When the others print, it can take up to probably 45s or more for the printer to even shows signs of printing. It takes an age.

Why the differences? Does PC speed make a difference?
Click to expand...

Are you all using the same drivers and OS for starters?
 
How have you configured printer in Windows? Automatically detected?
 
All systems are automatically set to do the "rendering" at the pc side.

Therefore the faster the pc the quicker it spools to the printer.

For similar machines printing different speeds, if could be related to driver version and type of setup (PCL 5/6, PS, etc.) Here the print speeds are also related to the type of document being printed. Graphic images are faster using a PS driver (Postscript).
 
For clarification, I refer to how printer port is defined (manually IP address?) and metrics on multiple connections. Possibly the old machines are looking on the other LAN segment (or even WAN) before getting resolved to the local IP address. Just a thought for investigation.

The new machine is faster and new Windows prints faster, undoubtly, but difference is to big, possible timeout is involved.
 
sajunky said:
For clarification, I refer to how printer port is defined (manually IP address?) and metrics on multiple connections. Possibly the old machines are looking on the other LAN segment (or even WAN) before getting resolved to the local IP address. Just a thought for investigation.

The new machine is faster and new Windows prints faster, undoubtly, but difference is to big, possible timeout is involved.
Click to expand...

at my old work it was only a 2-3 sec difference nothing big, but it was noticeable sometimes.
 
How is the printer setup on the old pc's, through my work I've noticed some people have the printer name in the port and not it's I.P that happens when you tick "print to this printer even when it's IP changes" this takes longer as it first needs to resolve the IP.

Even with some old machines running xp I get prints immediately regardless of document type on a pcl6 driver using the actual ip as the port.
 
Zuner said:
How is the printer setup on the old pc's, through my work I've noticed some people have the printer name in the port and not it's I.P that happens when you tick "print to this printer even when it's IP changes" this takes longer as it first needs to resolve the IP.

Even with some old machines running xp I get prints immediately regardless of document type on a pcl6 driver using the actual ip as the port.
Click to expand...
Yip it is looking first in the Microsoft's domain namespace. If there is no server, or the item is not configured on the server, it reverts to the other mechanism after timeout. I forgot about this option.
 
Last edited:
Zuner said:
How is the printer setup on the old pc's, through my work I've noticed some people have the printer name in the port and not it's I.P that happens when you tick "print to this printer even when it's IP changes" this takes longer as it first needs to resolve the IP.

Even with some old machines running xp I get prints immediately regardless of document type on a pcl6 driver using the actual ip as the port.
Click to expand...
Sorry I'm not following. How do I even check this?
 
Cicero said:
Sorry I'm not following. How do I even check this?
Click to expand...

Go to devices and printers.. under the printers drop-down list find the printer in question right click it and select printer properties.

Go to the "ports" tab at the top, and there's be a list of all the ports. find the ticked one..

Capture.JPG

Select it and click on "configure port" and check that there's an IP in there not a machine name which is usually a bunch of letters and numbers in a seemingly random order.

If its wrong simply add the port without needing to redo the whole thing.
 
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