User Guide

Understanding Novell Distributed Print Services 17
Novell Distributed Print Services Administration Guide
103-000137-001
August 31, 2001
Novell Confidential
Manual 99a38 July 17, 2001
From this list, you can select drivers you want to be automatically downloaded
and installed on client workstations. You can add drivers to this database as
they become available.
Printer and Job Configuration Options
The NDPS interface supports many printer options in common use today,
while the open architecture of NDPS allows printer manufacturers to add their
own custom interfaces for specific printers. This means that as new printer
features become available, you can access them through NDPS.
Job Scheduling Options
NDPS allows you to configure and schedule print jobs to be processed
according to time of day, job size, or media availability.
Protocol Independence
The entire NDPS architecture is protocol independent. NDPS can be used in
an IPX-based environment, a pure TCP/IP environment, or a combination of
both. The third-party gateways being developed to work with NDPS are also
protocol independent.
Most printers that support TCP/IP today do not have a discovery protocol like
SAP for IPX-based networks. The Service Locator Protocol (SLP) will
eventually be embedded in printers and will provide a discovery protocol that
can be used with NDPS.
Compatibility with Multiple Clients, Applications, and Operating
Systems
NDPS provides an enhanced Windows* client to take advantage of all of the
advanced features provided by NDPS. All clients that are not NDPS-aware
can still print to NDPS printers, and you can use all of your existing
applications with NDPS. Although your queue-based print clients won't be
able to take full advantage of the advanced features available in NDPS, they
won't lose any of the printing ability they have now. This backward-
compatibility feature of NDPS makes it well-suited for heterogeneous
networks.