Secure Printing

[FreeWill]

On the network we have approximately 20 networked Epson printers, which Domain users print to using a Server 2003 print server. We allow some of the 6th form students to connect their laptops to the school network to get the internet on them, for 'research'.

 

It has come to our attention that some of these trusted 6th formers have been connecting to printers via IP address and printing directly to them - which means we cannot track what they are printing off.

 

Is there a way to setup Epson printers (mainly N3000s, N2050+s) to only accept print requests from the print server, or another way to prevent students from printing directly to printers?

 

Thanks in advance.

[Geoff]

Use a VLAN?

[FreeWill]

Unfortunately the majority of our switches are unmanaged, and therefore do not support VLANs, if I am correct?

 

We have found out how they were doing this. Using a piece of software called 'Bonjour' by Apple (formerly 'Renedezvous') they were able to browse networked printers that had a setting called 'Rendezvous' enabled - in our case all N3000s.

There is an option to switch off 'Rendezvous' in the web interface of the printers, and once disabled students can no longer add printers without knowing the IP or going via the print server. As far as I can tell...

 

So - problem fixed!