Restricting access to colour printer?

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Hi,

I was wonderig if there was an easy way to restrict access to a colour printer on a network? The printer has its own IP address. I was looking at the option to make it available for certain hours, but that appears to just queue jobs. (and I assume release them when the printer is available).

My other thought is to create an Organisational Unit in Active Directory and make those allowed to use the printer members of that group and assign rights that way.

Any other ideas?

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Assuming the queue is on a Windows Server, then yeah, I think you can apply any permissions you like to it just like a file share. (However, I haven’t done it for years, prior to our converting to AD).

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If the printer has its own IP address, and any computer can create it’s own print queue pointing to it, then you are dependent on the security features provided by the printer manufacturer. Many will allow anyone to connect, but some higer end printers have security features, ranging from simple passwords to IPSEC.

About the only alternative would be to use VLANs or other high end network switch features to restrict which computers can talk to the printer.

StuartR

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In addition what Stewart said, an answer depends of whom you want to restrict access to. Is it particular workstations, some user profiles on the same computer or roaming user profiles?

If you want to restrict access to users who permanently use the same and only computer, the solution is obvious: do not install printer on these computers.

If you want to restrict access to some users who use the same computer – you have to install printer server and apply group policies on it.

If you want to restrict access to roaming user profiles, do not install color printer locally. Instead you have to install printer server and using, for instance, ndps (if you are using Novell server) include printer into profile script etc.

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Thank you all for your assistance.

I do want to restrict access on the basis of roaming profiles (I had to pick the most comlicated scenario).

I will create the print queue on the server and then create appropriate security access.

Thanks again

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