Forum Discussion

CommuniCareSA's avatar
CommuniCareSA
Copper Contributor
Dec 20, 2021

Network Printers

Maybe I am missing something, but how does UP work for network printers at different facilities. We have multiple locations on an ELAN with their own IP for the sites. We have few print servers that ...
network
Rani_Abdellatif's avatar
Rani_Abdellatif
Former Employee
Dec 21, 2021

CommuniCareSA 

I’ll attempt to answer.

 

How does UP work for network printers?

With UP, both printers and client PCs are connected to the UP cloud service. Any PC can access any printer in the organization (based on permissions the admin assigns) regardless of whether the PC can connect to a printer on the ELAN. Therefore, UP works in a Zero Trust Network.

 

Is there a benefit using UP?

There are many factors you could consider that may help you decide whether there’s benefit to using UP in your environment, including:

  • No driver installation on a user’s client PC. UP is driverless.
  • Modern management. You can centrally manage printer deployment to client PCs from Microsoft Endpoint Manager.
  • Both AD and Azure AD users can print. That’s not possible with print servers.
  • You can completely get rid of print servers and their configuration/management. Printer manufacturers are updating printers that are currently in-market to natively support UP. So, you don’t even have to buy new printers that have native UP support. Check https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/universal-print/fundamentals/universal-print-partner-integrations to find out more about printers that support UP natively. Even if you use a connector, the connector is a lightweight component that runs on any PC (not just servers) and requires very little management compared to print servers. In addition, some organizations have to hang on to their AD Domain Controllers only to enable discovery of printers on print servers. If you’re in that situation, you can get rid of your DCs as well.

The list goes on and it will continue to grow as we work on enabling more usage scenarios and adding features. I recommend that you do a quick test and see if it will be beneficial for your organization. You can find documentation at http://aka.ms/UPDocs.

 

I hope this is helpful.

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