Gigabit network card for Ricoh / NRG MP C3000

[will_]

Does anybody know if it's possible to retrofit gigabit (copper) networking to our NRG (Ricoh) MP C3000 photocopier/printer/everything-box? We've just upgraded various parts of the network to gigabit only to discover that printing photos still takes ages because the machine itself is the bottleneck.

 

I suppose one option would be a USB cable to a print server but we don't have any servers within a USB cable's reach of the machine.

[featured_spectre]

How about putting a base unit near the machine, having it permanently on, and have USB on it. Bottleneck should clear up then!

[will_]

Would that (or any USB-based solution, for that matter) not entail updating the drivers on all our machines? This printer is used by everybody.

[mac_shinobi]

Would that (or any USB-based solution, for that matter) not entail updating the drivers on all our machines? This printer is used by everybody.

Other computers on the network -> shared printer on base unit that is attached to the network via gigabit and connected to the copier via usbI presume thats what they meant by the above suggestion

[featured_spectre]

It was indeed...sharing the printer will mean no drivers will be necessary except on the base unit.

[plexer]

What have you used to quantify that the current 100mbit network connection is the bottleneck?

 

Ben

[Michael]

I have to agree with plexer. Typically the amount of on board memory is the bottleneck rather than the 10/100 network connection.

[will_]

It was indeed...sharing the printer will mean no drivers will be necessary except on the base unit.

But I'd still have to do something to every client, wouldn't I, so that they'd print via the new server rather than via the old network cable?

 

 

What have you used to quantify that the current 100mbit network connection is the bottleneck?

I have to agree with plexer. Typically the amount of on board memory is the bottleneck rather than the 10/100 network connection.

Skip to EDIT!

 

I was going to say...

 

That's interesting. I hadn't considered that. Having said that, the printer itself has 1GB RAM and 17GB's of free hard drive space do I doubt it's running out of room.

 

My assumption was based on observing the rate at which documents spool from the print queue to the printer. "Ordinary" jobs are fine but when somebody sends a load of photos it'll pause for about a minute between each page, during which time the network link light flashes furiously and the "sent" figure in the print queue slowly rises to the "size" figure.

 

Having said that, a 100Mbit link ought to be able to spool data at 100 / 8 bits per byte / 2 for overheads and real life = 6.25MBytes/sec, which should clear even a document of, say, 20MB in only a few seconds. We've just (this week, during half term) tidied up a lot of the network infrastructure, so I'll see whether this improves matters before investigating much further.

 

EDIT: Just realised - silly me - it's almost certainly the wireless link over which staff laptops print that is the bottleneck. We've just upgraded that (from a hopelessly inadequate Netgear setup to a hopefully all-singing, all-dancing Ruckus setup) this week, too, so that might improve things.

Edited October 30, 2011 by will_

[mac_shinobi]

There are a number of things you can do both on the copier and driver settings to help, am just curious is it any faster if you connect a client pc directly to the copier over the network as apposed to going from the client pc --> print server --> copier

 

On copier :

 

User tools button -->

 

Printer Features --> System settings tab --> Memory usage -> 2 settings here, I think it needs to be set to font but will check this and post back / edit this.

 

System Settings --> Interface Settings tab --> Set throughput mode to 100 mbps full duplex instead of auto detect ( Can't remember the options name but its to manually set the network speed )

 

Also driver wise :

 

Change from true type font to bit image if PCL based driver ( PCL 5 is the one I suggest as PCL 6 is buggy ) otherwise RPCS or Post Script if your copier has Post Script installed ( this is something extra you have to pay for when you ordered the copier ). I change this setting both in printer preferences and printing defaults on the server and client.

 

ALso from the client just to see - if you ping the copiers ip address I presume the time out doesn't fluctuate too much so is lower then 40ms for each response ?

 

Also the switch port it is connected to can this be set on the switch to 100mbps instead of 1gbs, although the network can deal with 1gbs obviously the copier can't. Swapping the NIC on one of them would cost a lot as its a whole physical board, that or unless you can have a word with Ricoh to sort out getting a copier to replace it that has a gigabit connection