Wireless Access

We use PaperCut NG as our print management suite on multiple Windows Server 2008 R2 servers. This new version offers an AirPrint solution. To sum it up, you install their secondary helper server on a Lion mac and add the print queues that you want AirPrint enabled to this mac. This device then becomes the "AirPrint server". Their installation guide says that it may not work across subnets because of Bonjour/mDNS. My question is: has anyone setup AirPrint in a large environment across subnets?

My original (not-very-scalable) plan is to dual home the iMac. 1 NIC into our server VLAN and 1 into one of our wireless subnets. Then use DHCP fingerprinting to move iPads to this specific subnet.

Here's a couple of things i'm worried about in this scenario:

1) Scalability beyond 250 devices and not having to put an interface or AirPrint server in every subnet

2) I am currently dropping multicast and broadcast on our primary SSID. I'm assuming this would affect AirPrint?

Some background on our network. We are 100% switched core and the controllers are layer 2 at the core. We use public addressing and to not use NAT.

You can search-and-replace "may not work across subnets because of Bonjour/mDNS" with "WILL NOT work across subnets because of Bonjour/mDNS".

The problem is the protocol which is not enterprise-ready.  Plenty of organizations still try to bring services like Airprint and Screen Sharing that only work at home to the enterprise, but they fail while trying.   Please see a very animated thread about Bonjour in large environments here:  http://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A2=ind1106&L=WIRELESS-LAN&D=0&P=22062

With that being said, if anyone has found a very straightforward way of dealing with this, please share.

Well, I can't speak for any solution when it comes to Bonjour. However, I can speak about the iMac server.

Being OS agnostic, one of the benefits I've found on OSX over Windows is its ability to create many virtual adapters. You can create an IP for each VLAN that you want to be able to AirPrint on. Here's how:

1. Open Network Preferences

2. Click the gear at the bottom of the network adapter list

3. Click Manage Virtual Interfaces

4. Click the +

5. Click New Vlan

6. Enter a name and the VLAN number (make sure Ethernet, is chosen)

7. Click Create

8. Click Done

Now you should see your new Virtual Interface in the list of adapters. You can then static an address for your iMac on that VLAN.

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01-13-2012 08:06 AM

This worked beautifully on a mac mini running os x 10.6.8 and airprint activator. I had to change the Cisco switch port to trunking and all was good.

Yes, I have written an article on how to set this up

https://sites.google.com/site/iwastepaper/

Hope this helps,

Ashish

[Personal Information Removed]

Has anyone found any other solutions to this problem?  We're looking for a hardware solution,  I've seen solutions from Thinprint (software) and another product from SEH called "primos" (hardware).