Lantronix xPrintServer Network Edition - iOS Printing in the Office Made Simple

Printing from an Apple iOS Device

If you’ve an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch, you might have heard of something called AirPrint. A highly anticipated feature that debuted in iOS 4.2, it allows AirPrint-enabled apps on your iOS device to wirelessly print to an AirPrint-supported printer residing on the same Wi-Fi network. The proposition is certainly very attractive: You don’t need to install any driver or configure a printer. In Apple’s own words, all you need to do is to “tap print, select the printer that supports AirPrint, and print.”

In the beginning, only a handful of HP printers supported AirPrint. But last we checked, there are now more than 130 printers - from the likes of Brother, Canon, Epson, HP, and Lexmark - that support it. Still, this is a small number compared to the hundreds of printer models currently out in the market. Another alternative is to hope that your printer’s manufacturer would release its own app in the App Store so that you can use it as a gateway to print your documents.

Third party apps have also stepped in to bring iOS wireless printing to printers that don’t support AirPrint. One popular app is Printopia. But like other similar apps, you’ve to install it on a host Mac. The printer can be attached to the Mac via USB, or plugged to a router; the important point is that the Mac must be able to ‘see’ the printer and print to it, in order for you to be able to share it with your iOS devices. For Windows users, one such AirPrint-enabling software is FingerPrint.

Enter xPrintServer

What if we could print wirelessly from our iOS devices to any networked printers - even non-AirPrint-enabled ones - without the need to install any app on our iOS devices or desktop machines? This would be tremendously useful for companies too, especially those with a huge fleet of printers, and those that have strict policies on what their employees can or cannot install on their workstations.

Well, enter xPrintServer from Lantronix (a California-headquartered company that deals with secure communication technologies), which promises just that. In addition, the product literature claims of automatic printer discovery and provisioning, with zero configuration (using zeroconf) needed. Intrigued by all these promises, we brought one into our lab for a test drive. Read on to find out if it delivers.

Plug-and-Print

With dimension coming up to 11.4 x 6.0 x 2.2cm, the xPrintServer Network Edition is about the size of two iPhones stacked together. Encased in cream colored plastic, it’s pretty light too, weighing just under 90g. However, power supply isn’t built into the device, so there’s a jack at the side for plugging in a wall adapter. A 5V, 1.6A one is bundled, along with four interchangeable AC adapter plugs so that you can plug the adapter into most electrical outlets around the world.

Beside the power jack is a single Ethernet port. A 1m Cat 5 Ethernet cable is supplied in the box. A tiny pin hole at the bottom of the xPrintServer hides a reset button; using a paper clip, press and hold this button for about 15 seconds to restore the xPrintServer’s settings to factory defaults.

Unlike a typical print server where you’ve printers connect to it by way of USB, and then shared over the network, the xPrintServer only needs to be connected to the LAN, and it will automatically figure out the printers on the same subnet. It really is that easy. At the moment though, the xPrintServer Network Edition only works with native networked printers - that is, those with built-in Ethernet or Wi-Fi support. It doesn't have a USB port where you can plug in a USB printer; neither does it work with USB printers that are shared over the network. If you need the above, you'd be better served with the Home Edition of the xPrintServer. However, this home version only supports up to two network attached printers (versus unlimited for the Network Edition), and doesn't provide any printer access management functions.

Works Great for Supported Printers

When the xPrintServer is connected to the network and has discovered and provisioned the printers, the status LED that's incorporated into the letter ‘X’ at the end of the Lantronix logo on top of the device will pulsate slowly in orange. From then on, you can start printing from your iOS device.

So, does it work? In a word: Yes.

To print from an iOS device, what you need to do is to bring up the action sheet (circled in red in the image above) in the app (be it Safari, Mail, Photos, or any AirPrint-enabled app), and tap on the Print button. Assuming the printer is successfully discovered by the xPrintServer, you should see its name in the list of available networked printers. Just select it, enter the number of copies to print, and hit Print. If a printer is listed twice, the correct one to choose is the one whereby the name ends with 'XPrintServer'.

Earlier, we mentioned that for printer auto detection to work, the xPrintServer and the printer must be on the same subnet. In geek speak, what happens is that SNMP broadcast takes care of the discovery of the printers, while Bonjour ensures that they show up throughout the network. However, once the auto detection process is completed, the xPrintServer can be moved to a different subnet, on the condition that multicast traffic is allowed between the two subnets.

In addition, while the xPrintServer has to be connected to the router (or switch) via a CAT 5 cable, the printer can be connected to the network either via a wired or a wireless connection. Also, while Lantronix says that each xPrintServer in theory supports unlimited number of iOS devices and network attached printers, it recommends up to 10 printers for optimal performance. Due to the resource intensive nature of the discovery/provision mechanism, if you've many printers (say, in the hundreds), the xPrintServer may become unresponsive until the initial discovery and provisioning process is completed.

Advanced Configuration

During its first bootup, the xPrintServer will automatically 'call home' to register its IP address and serial number with the Lantronix Web Services website, which in turn provides a unique IP address for the device. To find out the xPrintServer's IP address on your network (so that you can log into the xPrintServer web interface to carry out printing management), simply go to Lantronix's Find My xPrintServer webpage, and enter your xPrintServer's serial number, which can be found on the packaging or under the device. You'd then be redirected to your browser to login to the xPrintServer user interface. You should note down this IP address so that you can return to the browser-based management interface anytime.

Besides Home, there are a few more tabs running across the top of the web interface. Through the Admin tab, you can upgrade the xPrintServer's firmware, give it a new name, reset or reboot the device. The Jobs section will show you what print jobs have taken place; you can even cancel an active job from here. The Printers section will tell you all the printers configured to the xPrintServer. You can rename printers and their locations, configure user access (you can add or remove a user under the Users tab), re-run the discovery process to check for new printers, and manually add a printer, among others. And as the name implies, the Logs section will show you all diagnostic and access messages.

Of course, not all users can access all the tabs in the xPrintServer user interface. An Admin user will have access to all of them, while a non-admin user can only see the Home, Jobs, and Log-Off tabs or pages.

Conclusion: iOS Printing (Especially in the Office) Made Easy

In summary, the xPrintServer works as claimed. Just plug it into your network, wait for it to finish detecting and provisioning your printers, and you’re ready to print from your iPhone or iPad. There’s no need to install anything either on your computer or your iOS device. For companies with bring-your-own-device policies that include these iOS devices, the xPrintServer Network Edition can help to reduce a lot of headaches for the IT department.

While this may sound like an obvious point, we think that it’s worth pointing out that for the xPrintServer to work, the network that it connects to needs to have access to the Internet. For one, when you first set it up, it has to register itself with Lantronix over the Internet. Secondly, during the initial printer detection/provision stage (as well as when you’re re-running the discovery process), it has to again connect to Lantronix to check for and download the necessary drivers.

The only quibble we’ve of the xPrintServer is that it doesn’t support all printers. However, we understand that this is perhaps an unrealistic expectation as there are just too many printer models out there. Therefore, if you’ve a very old printer or a newly launched one, don't be surprised that it's not in Lantronix’s database. One thing that you can do before you buy the xPrintServer is to check this supported printer list to see if your printer is in the list of over 4,000 supported models. The Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4521 inkjet AIO printer that we used for this test is in the list, and the xPrintServer worked smoothly. We also tested with a relatively new Oki MB491 LED AIO printer which is not listed as a supported printer, and were unable to get it to print. This was despite the xPrintServer trying to fallback to an older Oki MC361 driver. If this happens to you, you can try deleting the printer through the web interface, and initiating the discovery process again; hopefully, there’d be newer drivers. If that doesn’t work out, you can send an email to request support for your printer.

In a nutshell, the xPrintServer works great, if your printer is officially supported. So, do your fair share of research before rushing off to the store.

In Singapore, the Lantronix xPrintServer Network Edition is priced at S$360, and is distributed by Avanca Technologies.

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