Discover Printers

You can use SNMP broadcast to perform discovery and/or you can set up IP address ranges and then perform discovery. Discovery with SNMP broadcast can take a significant amount of time to complete on large networks. If you have a class A or B network, we strongly recommend that you limit discovery by IP address range so that you do not overwhelm your network. See Add an IP Address Range for more information.

To discover printers:

Click Destinations in the main menu and select Printer discovery. The Printer Discovery page opens.
Take the appropriate action:

If you want to use . . .	Then . . .
SNMP broadcast without IP address ranges	Make sure that Use SNMP broadcast is checked. Go to step 3.
IP address range(s) without SNMP broadcast	Make sure that Use SNMP broadcast is not checked and the address range(s) you want to use are enabled. If you need to add any address range(s), see Add/Change an IP Address Range. Go to step 3.
IP address range(s) with SNMP broadcast	Make sure that Use SNMP broadcast is checked and the address range(s) you want to use are enabled. If you need to add any address range(s), see Add/Change an IP Address Range. Go to step 3.

Click Start Discovery.

EasySpooler displays the message Discovery in progress while it searches for printers. When it completes the search, it displays the results in the table.

NOTE: If you want to stop the discovery process before it is complete, click Stop Discovery.

The table on the Printer Discovery page shows the following information for each printer.

Information Type	Definition
Name	The name by which the EasySpooler database knows the printer.
Destination	If the printer is already configured, this column shows the EasySpooler destination name.
IP Address	The IP address of the printer.
Port	The port number on which the host or IP address allows connections.
Description	Description of the printer, if known. Older printers may show less information than newer printers.
Location	Location of the printer, if entered during printer configuration.
Duplex	Whether or not the printer is capable of duplex (two-sided) printing.
PCL	Whether or not the printer supports the PCL data type. If unknown, the column shows a question mark.
PCL-XL	Whether or not the printer supports the PCL-XL data type. If unknown, the column shows a question mark.
Postscript	Whether or not the printer supports the PostScript data type. If unknown, the column shows a question mark.

After discovery, you must add the printers that you want to use as a EasySpooler destination. When you add a printer, it appears on the Destinations list. You can add printers singly or in batch. For information on adding a single printer, see Add a Discovered Destination. For information on adding printers in batch, see Add Multiple Discovered Destinations.

If you used SNMP broadcast, the Printer Discovery page lists both configured and unconfigured printers. The level of detail varies according to the degree of SNMP support offered by the printer. It is not unusual to see multiple rows for the same name/network location.

For example, an HP JetDirect™ print server allows up to three parallel port connections for printers to be attached to a network. These printers would have the same IP address, but different port numbers or lpr queue names.

NOTE: EasySpooler retains discovery results indefinitely. After discovery, the table on the Printer Discovery page lists the results of the most recent discovery procedure. It also lists any printers discovered earlier, even if the most recent discovery procedure did not find them. EasySpooler keeps these printers on the list in case they were temporarily inaccessible during the discovery.

You should remove previously discovered printers if they are no longer valid and you want to create an up-to-the-minute view of available network printers. You can check the boxes to the left of these printers and click on the destination(s) and select Remove from list from the drop-down options.