- In this sub lesson, we're gonna talk
about device sharing as it applies to printers.
And we're gonna talk about wired connections,
including USB, serial, and ethernet,
wireless connections,
including Bluetooth and 802.11x.
And when I say 802.11x,
I mean 802.11 B, G,
N, AC, and so on.
And we'll also talk about the integrated print server
and how all those work when it comes to sharing devices
and allowing multiple computers to share the printer.
- [Instructor] So it would be very costly to have a printer
connected to every single computer.
Now, in some companies, in some departments,
you do have that, it's necessary,
but, in most cases, computers will share one
or more printers.
So to do that, we have to configure device sharing.
But before we do that, let's talk a little bit
about the types.
Printer sharing can be done in a variety of ways.
And the first is wired.
We're talking about USB connections.
The universal serial bus connection will normally be
a type A connection out of the computer,
your standard USB port,
to a type B connection on the printer.
That's very common,
and that's a local connection to the computer,
but you might also have print servers,
which we'll talk about in a second,
that have USB connections.
Now an older type of connection is serial.
You're not gonna see that as much anymore.
The old serial and parallel connections.
You probably won't use those ports.
You probably don't have them on your computer,
but if you have a connection like this,
if you see a connection like this,
the serial connects to a DB15F,
and if you have a parallel connection,
it could be either a nine pin female
or a 25 pin female, that's real old school stuff,
but chances are you won't see that.
Now, also, you have printers
that can be connected directly to the network
via ethernet.
And that's done with an RJ45 connection
and we'll show these connections
on a printer in the last sub lesson.
You know, that's for printers that have that capability.
Some printers only have a USB connection.
You know, if you have, say, an inkjet printer for your home,
it probably just has a USB connector,
a type B,
but if you have a printer
that could be used in a midsize company or a large company,
it'll almost likely have an ethernet connection,
so you can control that printer over the network.
So wired is the first way.
Then you have wireless,
and you can connect to a lot of printers today
via wifi 802.11,
either 802.11 G,
or N,
or AC,
and some printers are Bluetooth, also,
especially if you're working with mobile devices.
You can connect to little handheld printers
with the Bluetooth protocol.
So wireless is another possibility.
And then that print server that we mentioned before.
A print server is a little box
that connects to your network.
And then it has a USB connection
for the printer to connect to.
And this way you can control that printer over the network.
That's a basic version of a print server.
Then you get into more advanced print servers
when you have actual server software
that's controlling multiple servers
and the printers are either connected directly
to that server,
or they're connected to the network.
That gets more advanced,
but your basic print server is a little device
that connects to your network, SOHO, or port router,
or what have you,
and it has that USB connection for the printer.
Now, sometimes the four port router has a built in
print server,
so it has that USB connection.
Then there's over the cloud,
and you might do your printing over the internet
and that's a new,
with all the cloud based technologies for data storage,
and for administration, and virtualization,
it makes sense that there's printing, as well.
And you might have your printers in another building.
And so you could print through the cloud to get to them,
or in another city,
or you might be controlling your printers
which are local in your building,
but controlling them from a print server,
which is located on the cloud.
So there's a lot of possibilities with that.
And we're gonna talk more
about all the networking side of stuff in the next module.
So we're gonna kinda lay off that a little bit now,
but you should know some of the ways that it can be done.
Wired options, like USB and ethernet.
Wireless,
such as 802.11 N
or AC for your PCs
and for your laptops,
and possibly Bluetooth for your mobile devices.
A print server that connects to the network
or is built into your router,
and over the cloud in a variety of ways.
So let's demonstrate how to share a printer in Windows.
That's what's really important.
We'll go back to our devices and printers.
First, the HP Deskjet D1500.
You see this little icon here with two people.
That means that it is shared.
If it doesn't have that icon,
like this printer here,
then it is not shared.
And by the way, the check mark means
that that is the default printer
that this computer will print to.
So let's right click on this HP Deskjet and take a look.
To access the sharing portion of the printer properties,
we go to printer properties
and go to the sharing tab,
and you can see here it is check marked.
Share this printer
and here's the share name.
Now, I'll tell you right now,
that's not a very good share name.
It's not a good idea to have spaces in any share names,
and you don't want 'em to be too complex either.
You know, who's gonna remember,
"Oh, I'm connecting to the HP Deskjet D1500 series
with spaces.
No, you're gonna probably do it by the department.
So for example, maybe the accounting group
which has 10 employees is sharing this printer.
They're all using it.
We'll just call it accounting,
or accounting printer.
So that's pretty easy to remember.
And you see you have an option here,
render print jobs on client computers.
What that means is the processing of the job happens
at the local computer that's initiating the print job,
instead of relying on the resources of the printer,
which are usually pretty limited.
So that's where you go through the sharing.
Now let's show a printer that is not shared yet.
Again, that icon means sharing.
This one is not shared.
We'll right click it, go to printer properties,
go to sharing,
and we'll check mark share this printer.
And you can see that I actually had this shared before,
as marketing printer four.
Maybe the marketing department has several printers,
one for black and white documents,
one for color documents,
who knows, backup printers in case one is really busy.
We share it, we name it,
and then we okay it.
And that puts the little icon there.
And you can see that it is now shared.
In previous versions of Windows,
You might have had a networking connection
to show the sharing icon,
or something else,
a hand, or you know, a different items.
But nowadays you see these two people,
and that just means that it's a work group.
Multiple people, multiple users can access this printer.
Okay finally, privacy can be an issue,
and it must be considered, as well.
You always gotta think about security.
And remember I said that that's one of the six facets
of dealing with technology,
security, very important.
And what are we talking about here?
Well, we're talking about two things.
Who can access the printer
and where is the data stored?
Where is the data from the print job stored
and is it removed?
So let's go back to our devices and printers
and we'll use this guy.
We'll use the HP LaserJet that we just shared.
Right click that guy and go to printer properties.
Again, he is shared,
so multiple people can connect to this printer,
but to specify exactly who can connect,
we go to the security tab,
and that's where we set our permissions.
And again, this gets more into the 220-902 exam,
and it gets further into technology,
but you see a list of people that can connect here.
And you'll notice that we have the everyone group.
That means everyone on the network can print
to this printer.
It's allowed.
You might wanna remove that.
If we remove that guy,
now only the people listed can connect.
And you can add users individually,
and you can click advanced to search for those users
where you can type the name of the user.
So this is where you would go to add or remove users
that are allowed to connect,
and then you can modify how they can access the printer.
For example, this user account can print,
can manage the printer, and manage documents.
This person can do everything,
and any other administrator on this computer can as well.
So you may wanna modify that.
So that's where you go
to help with permissions
and to make sure that only the people you want can connect
to that printer.
Very important.
The other thing was where is the data stored?
Well, we said before that the print jobs
are rendered at the client computers,
and one of the ways this is done is through spooling.
If we go to the advanced tab,
you'll see that we have the spooling option turned on,
and it says, spool print documents
so the program finishes printing faster
and start printing immediately.
So what happens is the job is processed or rendered
at the local computer,
and then sent over to the printer page by page.
So you wanna make sure that that information is removed
from the local computer, first of all.
And one of the best ways to do that is to set the system
to clear temporary files perhaps every 24 hours.
And the same thing holds true for the printer.
The printer itself, you know
this guy holds a cache of jobs that were printed,
and that's one of the common ways
that people will go in and grab personal information.
To grab it from the printer cache from the printer memory,
cuz printers have RAM,
and they process the document before they print it.
So you can set this on the OSD,
on the onscreen display
to also delete the cache,
and I would do that every,
maybe every 12 hours or every 24 hours,
or at a specific time, for example at 5:00 PM,
when everybody's leaving.
This way anybody who comes in after hours,
cleaning crew or anybody who has access to the building,
or who knows what,
if they tried to access the printer
and grab the cache,
grab the old files that are stored in RAM,
then they're not gonna be able to get them
because they've been cleared out.
So that's a little bit about the security there.
So again, privacy can be an issue.
You gotta consider that with any device
that you install
and make sure that you're securing it
as far as the users that can connect
and where that data is stored.
Any cached or spooled data,
you wanna make sure that's removed.