Printing to an Internet Printer

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Windows 2000 supports a new protocol called Internet Printing Protocol (IPP). With this feature, you can connect to a printer on the Internet in the same way that you use a network printer. If your system administrator has set up printers on a Web server at work, this means you can print from home while still wearing a robe and slippers. It also means you can print to other printers that aren't on your network, such as a color printer at a nearby service bureau, or at a client's office.

Any Windows 2000 server that is accessible over the Internet (or an intranet) can be an Internet print server. (For a Windows 2000 server to be accessible over the Internet, it must have Internet Information Services [IIS] installed and running, and it must be connected to the Internet. Those topics are beyond the scope of this book.) On such a server, you simply set up and share a printer as you would for sharing over the network. Internet users can then connect to the printer, print documents, and manage print jobs. You limit access to the printer using ordinary HTTP security schemes—another topic beyond the scope of this book. Our point in mentioning this is that adding a shared printer to a Web server is incredibly simple; the hard part (which is also much easier with Windows 2000 than ever before) is setting up the Web server.

To connect to an Internet printer, use your Web browser to open http://server/printers (where server is the name of the Web server), and then simply click the printer you want from the list that appears. (Alternatively, launch Add Printer, and enter the printer's URL when the wizard asks for the printer's location.) In either case, Windows 2000 downloads the printer driver from the print server and installs it on your computer. You can then use the printer exactly like any other installed printer; in addition to printing, you can perform other printer-management tasks, as described in the following sections.