Internet Printer Protocol

Ok, I don't own a printer, but some of you guys might still use that outdated paper thing. Here is an article about the Internet Printer Protocol (IPP) which is being touted now as the latest greatest in allowing people to print over the internet. Odd. I did it all the time when I was writing papers and stuff.

Comments

Printers with a webpage

[Stan Chesnutt]

I once worked at Adobe in the PostScript group. We were experimenting with printers that had an HTTPd server embedded in them. The printer had its own webpage displaying toner reserves, job-queue status, any recent error conditions, etc.

Also, there were pointers to the manufacturer's webpage so that you could reorder supplies, get questions answered, and so on. To me, this seemed to be the perfect integration of "dumb" devices and the power of the WWW. I'm glad to see that, at least for printers, there is an evolving standard for this stuff.

Think a bit and extend the idea: disk drives with a webpage (giving usage stats, error rates) ... a webpage for your car (mechanical & fluid status) a webpage for your cellphone (how many calling-minutes so far this month)... a webpage for the coke machine down the hall (been there, done that :)

Stan

Protocol Specifications

[scottsevertson]

The 1.0 IPP specifications are available in PDF or in TXT formats. I'll post more once I've read them myself...




Scott Severtson
Software Developer
Auragen Communications
scotty@auragen.com

My bad...

[scottsevertson]

The links above are just for the IPP URL naming convention. Check out http://www.pwg.org/ipp/ for a full list of documents that are available.


Scott Severtson
Software Developer
Auragen Communications
scotty@auragen.com

Protocol Specifications Review

[scottsevertson]

OK, a brief run down after speed reading the IPP specification:

• IPP is secureThe protocol specifies that Transport Layer Security (TLS) Version 1.0 will be used to provided mutual authentication and encryption. Elsewhere in the documents, (optional) compression can be applied as well.
• IPP is complexWith support for multiple document protocols, multiple documents per "job", and a fairly detailed client querying process, it also won't be cheap.
• Document protocols are specified as MIME types, and they define a couple recommended ones: PCL, Postscript, HTML, and plain text.
• Documents can be sent as a URI (i.e. an HTTP URL), which, if the IPP server supports it, can be used to go out and retrieve the document when the printer is available to print it, instead of holding it in spool.
• Multiple configurations are specified, with just waiting to be created. For example, IPP allows a printer with an embedded spooler and internet interface, a printer hooked to a spooling server with an internet interface, and multiple printers hooked to a spooling, smart server with an internet interface, which routes the document to the printer best suited/least busy for the job.
• Supports extended properties for client querying. The single biggest advantage of the system is that the client does not have to have any idea of what type of print it is printing to, i.e. no more specific printer drivers. Instead, the client connects to the printer/spooler, asks it what it can do, and sends the document in a compatable format. This should (hopefully) save a lot of hassle in the work place for configuring printers on thousands of desktops.

Just my two cents.


Scott Severtson
Software Developer
Auragen Communications
scotty@auragen.com