Very slow network printing

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Guest

I have 2 seperate situations where printing to a shared printer in a
workgroup environment causes a big slowdown for print jobs. In both cases
the printers are connected to a PC and shared. 1 uses USB and 1 uses a
parallel port connection. Both display similiar issues.

Situation #1 involves an Epson RX500 - any program printing to it over the
network results in about a 30 second or more delay before any action is
noticed. A response finally comes up notifying that the job was sent to the
printer. At this time, the print job actually prints. When printing from
the PC this printer is physically connected to, the print jobs print
imeadiatly.

On another network with 2 XP Pro SP2 PCs on it, the print jobs from the PC
with the attached printer zip right through as you would expect. The network
print jobs again seem to get caught up in this 30 second or more delay before
the job actually prints.

I'm using TCP/IP, Simple file sharing is turned off, Windows Firewall is
turned off. All user names have passwords and have an account on each PC.

1 network has 10 PCs on it using an SMC switch and a Netgear fsv318 router -
DHCP addressing (NAT).

The other has 2 PCs on it and a simple hub, static IPs and gateway - not
connected to the Internet at all.

Prior to this the 2 PC network used Windows 2000 SP4 without any issues.

The 10 PC network started having problems after updating XP to SP2 on the PC
with the printer attached. I have downloaded the latest drivers from
manufactuers but no joy.

Really need some help - this is a problem for the 2 PC network - business
needs to print forms for customers and customers get tired of waiting.
 
Just a little note on how networking printers work:

If PC1 wants to print to a printer on PC2...

PC1 must first send the entire document to PC2... then PC2 sends the signal
to the printer.

If the document is large, it may take about 30 seconds to send the
information from PC1 to PC2.

Now, when its printing directly from PC2 to the printer, of course it's
instant. it skips an entire step (Sending from PC1 to PC2).

Slow transfer from PC1 to PC2 can be many things...
If you are on a wireless network, it may be the Wi-Fi- speed that is the
culprit. b-wireless is slower than g-wireless. And G wireless ranges from
802.11kbps to 108 Mbps. Anything slower than 10Mbps is slower than normal
ethernet.

If it is a wired network, you may want to check what the speed of your
connection is. Most Intranet connections are 100 Mbps or more, but some
networks run at 10 Mbps. hence the 10/100 speeds found on most routers.

An example would be a document may take 30 seconds on a 10Mbps network, but
only 3 seconds on a 100mbps network (a factor of 10 difference).

I hope that helps somewhat.
 
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