University Systems --> LPCR - Print Accounts --> --> LPCR Information for Students --> Frequently Asked Questions about LPCR -->

Frequently Asked Questions about LPCR

• The history of LPCR
• The Implementation of LPCR
• Do other universities charge for printing?
• How was the cost per page determined?

The History of LPCR

The LPCR project was started to defray the costs of maintaining laser printers in wam computer labs. Before it began, OIT (then known as the Computer Science Center) spent over $100K per year on printing and supplies. Students used the printers as copiers and printed non-academic materials. Posting guidelines to discourage wasteful printing did nothing to allay costs. In 1992, OIT decided to come up with a solution to the problem, and print accounting was fully implemented by January 1994.

With the implementation of LPCR, wasteful printing dramatically decreased. Compare paper usage from before the program started in 1993, with paper usage immediately after the program started, through today. LPCR allowed OIT to continue to offer printing in the labs without the large expense entailed by free printing.

The Implementation of LPCR

There were no commercial solutions available for print management when LPCR started, so a solution was developed inhouse.

Components

• HP printers and inhouse drivers
  • These take advantage of the PJL language in order to set page limits, get page counts, etc. Large labs generally have two printers in a double-headed queue. All printers run in postscript mode.
• Banking server
  • This handles print account transactions, and is currently kept on bank, a Dec running Ultrix 4.3.
• Griffin Server
  • This handles transactions made from Dining Service Accounts to print accounts. It's kept on bank.
• Ingres database
  • For account information. kept on bank.
• Keyserver
  • Ripem provides the encryption for account authentication. This is also kept on bank.
• Spooler
  • The spooling is done by mdqs. This is done through neobank, a Sun Sparc 5 running Solaris 2.5.
• Clients for mac, windows, and unix platforms
  • The client runs in the background waiting for the user to initiate a printjob; then it contacts the keyserver to check the print account password, contacts the bank to check funds availability, and sends the job to the spooler.

Page Counting

The printing software doesn't count pages before a job is sent because this is unreliable. Instead, pages are counted after the job has printed. Before a job is sent, the bank is checked for available funds. The account balance is checked against a predefined amount (the user can change this variable or continue with the default value) which is held until the job is printed. After a job is printed, the printer is queried for a page count; this amount is deducted from the held amount. There are checks to halt jobs after the preset limit is reached.

Source Code and Other Available Solutions

Unfortunately, we don't have the resources to provide support for the software, so we can't make source code available.

Do other universities charge for printing?

Many other universities charge for printing. Methods include:

• paying cash at a dispatch window in a centralized print facility
• using a card-reader attached to the printer
• paying a computer fee added to tuition
• billing at the end of each semester

Universities that don't charge for printing generally issue guidelines restricting what may be printed, and some universities have programs running to delete copied print jobs in the print queue or maintain personal quotas.

For comparisons, here is a list of a few universities' web pages containing information about their print policies.

Other universities' printing policies:

• Cornell
  • Kerberos authenticated accounts, charging per page
• Mit
  • Free printing. Quota's were once used to limit the amount one could print per semester, but they've been phased out. Print logs track abuse.
• Tennessee Technological University
  • Free printing, with suggested guidelines.
• Towson
  • Cash card operated printers.
• U Penn
  • Cash card operated printers.
• University of Texas
  • Print accounts used, with a charge per page
  • UT has a lot of information about their print recovery methods available at their site. The Departmental Services page has links to information on their print software, UT Connect, that they might eventually make publicly available. (commercially?) (see Working documents on "next generation" print services).

How was the cost per page determined?

The consumables, the printer, and printer maintenance contracts are all factored into the cost per page. Other factors include a fee we are charged for using the Terrapin Express system, licensing for the protocol to talk to the Terrapin Express system, upkeep for the spooler and bank machines, the total volume of printing, and finally the cost of photocopies. The cost of photocopies is important because we do not want the printers being used as photocopiers; it sets a constraint on minimum cost per page.

A page cost case study

Here is a comparison of color printers and the cost of their consumables, plus issues to consider for setting page cost and choosing a printer for a lab environment. This cost analysis was done in an effort to put color printers in the labs. As a result of the analysis, the selection was narrowed down to the HP and the Tektronix. Because the HP supports the PJL language, it was chosen for smooth integration.

The results of the tests on the HP revealed an incompatibility with their PJL feature support and our method for counting pages and controlling output, thus they were not deployed in the labs. Our second choice, the Tektronix, would require the lpcr drivers to be rewritten. Since we do not have the employee hours to devote to this, we're waiting for the next line of color printers from HP that support the PJL features we need.