HP printing by I.P. or Bonjour?

Question

Level 4

1,610 points

HP printing by I.P. or Bonjour?

One of our office printers is an HP LaserJet 3380. Yesterday there was a power outage and this printer is not on a UPS. During the outage someone was trying to print to the printer even though it was out with the rest of the power. When the lights came back on we could no longer print from that one machine but our other machines could. The difference I found was that the other machines were contected via Bonjour while the main computer was connected via I.P. and the I.P. Address somehow changed during/after the outage. All machines are connected over an AirPort network with the printer using a Jetdirect print server.

My questions are:
1. What is a Bonjour printer and why would I use it instead of I.P. printing?
2. I seem to remember there was a reason to create the I.P. printer. Do I loose any features by not doing so?
3. Is this a normal occurance; the change in IP Address?

iMacs: 20 G5; 500 & 400 MHz PowerPC G3s, Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Posted on Jan 19, 2006 5:31 PM

Reply

Answer 1

greg sahli

Level 7

25,508 points

Jan 19, 2006 7:02 PM in response to Donald

Bonjour is an auto-discovery protocol for TCP/IP, kind of like appletalk used to be.

I don't think there's an advantage except the auto discovery feature.

The IP address change will happen unless you set the IP address of the Jetdirect. Then it will stay (and not use DHCP).

Reply

Answer 2

Donald Author

Level 4

1,610 points

Jan 20, 2006 7:53 AM in response to Donald

OK, here is what I figured out: Bonjour gives you access to the printer and all its features but does not allow you to configure, or use, the fax and scanner from a computer (you can still use the fax machine independently of course). Therefore you cannot use the HP Director (I knew there was a reason I had to use the IPAddress the last time). So if you want to use the scanner or fax machine you need to configure an IP printer. What is interesting is that you cannot use the Printer Setup Utility included on the iMac to configure the IP printer but you can use it to configure the Bonjour printer (it actually opens up the HP Jet Direct software in a browser). Fortunately, if set up correctly, you do not need to further configure anything beyond the hp all-in-one Setup Assistant. Now, you will have two HP printers in the printer list. I have always left the main computer with the IP printer as its default so that if anything needs to be scanned it is just a button away.

Now, one last issue. I have a hidden printer (the old one/previously named before the power outage) somewhere on my computer and I cannot find or delete it. When I use Spotlight it tells me I have a printer in my Applications folder with a generic application icon. When I click on it it does not take me to it or open it up. I cannot find it when I look through the folder. It seems to be invisable. How do I get rid of it or is it just in some type of cache that needs to be cleaned out?

Reply