Speed - Network Vs Parallel

  • Thread starter Thread starter Bob Kos
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Bob Kos

Hi All:

I have stumbled into a situation that has left me somewhat confused. I have
been using two Lexmark Optra S lasers and a Tektronix Phaser color laser on
my 10/100 ethernet network. It's a small home network. I set this up for
several convenience reasons. But one of my objectives in setting it all up
was to gain a little speed in throughput of jobs compared to parallel
connections.

Recently I migrated to WinXP. Then my Phaser started to give me mysterious
network problems. So as a temporary band-aid, I connected one Lexmark and
the Phaser to my main PC with parallel cables using separate LPT ports in
the machine. I figured I could at least use the printers till I could get
all the software / hardware issues resolved. What I stumbled onto is that
there is a very definite speed difference in the parallel setup compared to
the ethernet. The printers respond MUCH faster with the parallel. Now I'm
second guessing whether I should reassemble the machines as network
printers. I'm thinking that sharing them might be better.

Was I wrong to expect my printers to run faster on the ethernet? I realize
that the Phaser was slowed due to its 10mps card. But I am quite suprised
that the Lexmark with its 100mps speed is nowhere near as fast as the
parallel. Is this the way ethernet network printing is? Or do I have a
network problem that I need to sort out?

Any advice appreciated.
 
Hi All:

I have stumbled into a situation that has left me somewhat confused. I have
been using two Lexmark Optra S lasers and a Tektronix Phaser color laser on
my 10/100 ethernet network. It's a small home network. I set this up for
several convenience reasons. But one of my objectives in setting it all up
was to gain a little speed in throughput of jobs compared to parallel
connections.

Recently I migrated to WinXP. Then my Phaser started to give me mysterious
network problems. So as a temporary band-aid, I connected one Lexmark and
the Phaser to my main PC with parallel cables using separate LPT ports in
the machine. I figured I could at least use the printers till I could get
all the software / hardware issues resolved. What I stumbled onto is that
there is a very definite speed difference in the parallel setup compared to
the ethernet. The printers respond MUCH faster with the parallel. Now I'm
second guessing whether I should reassemble the machines as network
printers. I'm thinking that sharing them might be better.

Was I wrong to expect my printers to run faster on the ethernet? I realize
that the Phaser was slowed due to its 10mps card. But I am quite suprised
that the Lexmark with its 100mps speed is nowhere near as fast as the
parallel. Is this the way ethernet network printing is? Or do I have a
network problem that I need to sort out?

Any advice appreciated.
Click to expand...

I have setup numerous networks with Lexmark printers and by far they are faster
across the network than using the parallel port. I would have to say you have
something setup incorrectly in the network. What protocol are you using for the
Lexmark printer ? Do you have DCHP enabled? What kind of router do you
have? Give me as much information as you can about your network setup and I
will do my best to help.
 
Wayne Ware said:
I have setup numerous networks with Lexmark printers and by far they are faster
across the network than using the parallel port. I would have to say you have
something setup incorrectly in the network. What protocol are you using for the
Lexmark printer ? Do you have DCHP enabled? What kind of router do you
have? Give me as much information as you can about your network setup and I
will do my best to help.
Click to expand...

Hi:

Thanks for your reply.

I originally had all of the printers running under Win98 on a 3 computer
Peer - To - Peer network (Netbeui) attached to a 3Com 8 port 10/100 hub.
The Lexmarks were setup using Markvision. I don't think DCHP was installed
or utilized. If I'm not mistaken, it used 'LexIPX' or something similarly
named to actually communicate with the printers. It worked out of the box
so I didn't mess with it. The Phaser was set up as a TCP/IP connection.
Again, it worked once I learned a little bit about TCP/IP so i didn't try to
tweak it much.

I migrated to Windows XP and tried for a while to get the Lexmarks running
on a new network. I was not successful as I had been with the Win 98. It
is going to take me some time to figure out how to set the Lexmarks up in
WinXP. I don't know what the best approach will be. So i let that go and
concentrated on the Phaser. It was very random in whether it would connect
to the WinXP TCP/IP port. I couldn't successfully print to it, but I could
occasionally use its built in web server to modify settings, etc. I finally
concluded that there is a hardware problem with the Phaser and that I needed
to verify that it is operational with a Parallel cable. That's when i
discovered how much faster the Parallel setup is compared to what I had been
using.

That's where I'm at now. Learning XP networking is going to be my first
hurdle. I'm accustomed to the simplicity of Netbeui in Win98. Any
suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
 
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