How does location based printing know the closet printer?

[kappyninewood]

I understand the concept, but how does it know which is the closet printer?

[mikebarnett · Accepted solution]

The closest printer is determined by a set of rules that you configure in the Location-based printing GPO. Essentially you configure a rule that should correspond to a particular user, group, IP, MAC or range of IPs/MACs which will map the closest printer to that configured setting.

For a Marketing group you would configure the printer in the Marketing area.

For a printer in a certain area you could configure the clients nearby to all be in the same subnet and then configure that subnet range to map to the close by printer.

Let me know if you have more questions.

-Mike

[kappyninewood]

Thanks!  One more question.   We have a few printers that are stand alone, not connected to a print server. They use an embedded jet direct card. We are not able to get these to show up? What am I missing?

[mikebarnett]

For LBP to work you need to be able to connect to any printer using a TCP/IP style of port. Can you connect to those printers with that kind of port?

If not, then LBP likely won't be able to connect to the printer. If you can, then some other problem may be occurring.

You can test this by adding the printer into one of the desktops in your pool using the TCP/IP port.

-Mike