I doubt that EVERY single printer that is EVER made in the FUTURE will be
a network enabled printer, but the vast majority will! It hard to argue with
the growth rate of "networked" printers vs "host based" printers. It is
easy to extrapolate the data from the growth path and see that the
majority of printers will be nodes a a network rather than peripherals off
of some host. Now, not all of those will be "print server" type printers -
many will require some sort of server to front them, but many of the
mid-range and above will be "server" type printers. The beauty of the
IPP model is that it does not force a device into a "non-server printer" or a
"sever printer" configuration. It is a conistent model wether the
functionality is in the device or the typical server in front of the slave
device. Same protocol. Same Model. As the hardware is swapped out
for better/worse capable hardware, there is not a lot of reconfig
required. This is the utimate in scalability from my point of view.
Scott
>>> Babak Jahromi <babakj@MICROSOFT.com> 01/06/97 05:13pm >>>
> No, just make the IPP implementation easy enough, so most low end
> printers can afford it. This again implies not re-inventing the wheel. I
> also see nothing wrong with letting the server be hooked to Internet,
> passing the data to the printer via USB, parallel port, Ethernet, etc. I
> don't see a dying need for the printer boxes to be hoocked to the
> Internet directly.