ITEM: AR7080L

Printing to serial port on FASTCOM router

Env:3.2.5
    500 series RS/6000

DESC:
        Customer is trying to setup a print queue from AIX that prints
        to a serial port on the FASTCOM router.  How can this be done?

ACT:
        Explained that if we can get the router to change the TCP
        port number that tells the router "anything coming in on
        this tcp port goes to the printer" that we could then 
        define this as an HP JetDirect.

        If you can't change the port number (from ??? to 9100) then
        we could implement some additional software to do this as an
        mo filter.

ACT:
        Setup your router serial port with FASTCOM help:

        answer mode = on                (accept connections)
        dtr dial = no                   (AIX connects - not router)
        tcp port 9100                   (router listens on port 9100)
        remote port 0                   (client can be any TCP port)
        remote IP   0.0.0.0             (any client can print)

        9600, 8, none, 1, DTR pacing.

        Tried telnet \ 9100 but:
                Connected refused by host

        netstat -af inet |grep 9100

        It appears that some process on your RS/6000 is already
        trying to contact the router on port 9100 on router.  The
        router statistic tables show repeated connection attempts
        from RISC's IP.

        Sent you the public domain lsof program to see what process
        was already connecting to the router using TCP port 9100:

        lsof -i tcp:9100

        Found and killed several old processes.

        Now you could do: tn \ 9100 and get connected, and
        send over data which printed fine.

        Added a JetDirect virtual printer and this works fine as
        well. Once the router was setup to listen on TCP port 9100 
        like a JetDirect, it worked just as a JetDirect would and all
        printing looks fine.

        Customer worked with Pick support and they derived a similar
        solution to print from Pick to the same printer by creating
        a named pipe /dev/clientprinter and a daemon that sends to
        the TCP port 9100.  

        Customer is considering ConsultLine to purchase my netprint
        program so that he can print to arbitrary TCP ports other
        than 9100.  This way he could define multiple printers on the
        same router.  Another option may be to make the router
        respond to multiple IP addresses and print to port 9100 at
        the different IP addresses. Mailed you the readme file from the
        netprint program for future reference.



Support Line: Printing to serial port on FASTCOM router ITEM: AR7080L

Dated: November 1995 Category: N/A

This HTML file was generated 99/06/24~13:30:25

Comments or suggestions?
Contact us