Re: [WinMac] Clarification of JetDirect names change: Mac printing

CHoogendyk@aol.com
Wed, 19 May 1999 22:51:23 -0500

In a message dated 5/19/99 9:34:02 AM, PetersJB@nswccd.navy.mil writes:

>When we have several dozen HP LaserJet 4000s scattered over 20+ buildings,
>sending and retrieving test pages is a non-trivial task.

I deleted a response to this before I couuld respond to the response. 8-)

Anyway, you don't always have control over the renaming of newly installed
printers. In a predominantly windows environment, they might not even be
aware that their printers are serving AppleTalk. You tell them that you are
looking at their printer from a Mac, and they just say, "huh?"

You also have situations where NT folks who know nothing of Macs
inadvertantly capture your printer and remove it from the network.

It can end up being a pretty chore to straighten things out and keep them
straight.

I have been trying to lock down all our printers as well. A couple of months
ago we had the weirdest hacking of our network. Someone got on the network
and changed the IP addresses of a bunch of printers to be identical to the IP
address of one of our Sun servers. Suddenly we can't access the server, and a
bunch of departments have lost their ability to print. That one was really
hard to track down. I eventually had to go to the ARP tables of the buildings
border router and find the hardware addresses that were claiming that IP
address. Then I had to go to the DNS database and get the names of the
printers that corresponded with those hardware addresses and their correct IP
addresses. Then I had to use JetDirect to locate the printers by hardware
address, fix the IP, put a password on them, and lock down their control
panels.

After I figured this one out, I discovered that I could do all the
troubleshooting from my Mac using OTTool from Neon Software. Great little
piece of software. I love it.

Anyway, that was a fine mess.

Chris Hoogendyk
Network Specialist
UMass Library, Amherst

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This archive was generated by hypermail 2.0b2 on Wed May 19 1999 - 20:56:11 PDT