WAN Print Traffic Reduction

Connectivity is vital to day to day work routines. Employees work online and depend on applications. Even more so as many organizations grow their businesses to fully function in the cloud. Cloud storage has impacted the need for online access even further. Fast network connections are essential to a well functioning IT infrastructure. For many years, servers have been at the core of stable connectivity. But they also affected the duration in which processes were completed. Certain activities could impact the speed in which all operations are processed. Printing is one of those processes. Sending a file to a server and then to a printer can increase the file size immensely . It does so because of all the attributes that are sent along with the print job. Depending on the location of the server, submitting and processing a print job could take long to complete. For many years, organizations have resolved such speed issues by implementing a multitude of servers. One at minimum at each of the office locations. The result is an expensive and difficult to manage environment with little visibility into printing problems.

WAN Printing versus Direct IP Printing

WAN printing solutions typically depend on print servers. The alternative to a server-based print infrastructure is a direct IP printing solution.

What is direct IP printing? When an organization uses direct IP printing, the print command will result in instant processing of the print job on the printing device. Meaning that there are no policies applied, checks performed or records stored.

The need to manage and control printing prevents a wide-spread adoption of this method – especially for larger organizations that have to comply with data protection laws. That is why most large corporations rely heavily on print servers by default. And in doing so they are compromising on speed when it comes to processing heavy jobs. However, in many of these environments the delays that are caused due to a heavy load at peak hours are unacceptable and require these organizations to reduce their WAN traffic.

How to Speed Up Network Connections?

By eliminating server intensive processes organizations can speed up their network connections. One way to do that is to reduce WAN print traffic by keeping print jobs local and process them over the LAN instead as it would do with direct IP printing. This setup does not automatically compromise control over printing at a global level. Using a solution like VPSX/Workplace or VPSX/DirectPrint company policies can still be applied and records will be stored for a full audit trail. The key behind such a serverless architecture is a solution that keeps print jobs on the LAN (direct IP printing), but also submits a ticket over the WAN where the ticket gets processed in the same way as it would process the full print job. Without the complications and rapidity being affected.

VPSX/Workplace or VPSX/DirectPrint offer direct IP printing in a fully controlled setting. While the actual print job resides locally on the user’s device, the information is submitted to the LRS software to tick the following boxes:

User has the right permission and is allowed to print the file
Policies applied to the print job (if so required)
A record of the print job is stored for reporting and auditing purposes

This solution greatly reduces print related WAN traffic which is a large portion of data transfers for most organizations. It also eliminates the need for expensive print servers. Overall VPSX/Workplace or VPSX/DirectPrint can be an alternative to a WAN printing solution and offer all those benefits of a server based print management software.

To learn more about WAN print traffic reduction, direct IP printing and/or print server elimination, contact us by filling out the form on this page and our experts will get in touch.

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