In the age of networked computed where shared resources are encouraged to improve operational efficiency and lower costs, a network printer is a breather. It is a printer that can be connected to a company’s network and be used as a shared resource amongst many operators. Such a network print allows every system on a single network segment to perform its printing tasks using one printer thereby achieving better utilization of peripherals. The biggest advantage of employing a network printer is that one single printer does the printing jobs of the entire office. Leading brands that manufacture both wired and wireless networked printer are Samsung, HP, Canon and Brother. Products of all these brands are available for sale online at lucrative costs.

Whether a person is at work or home, using a print server, he or she can send all the print jobs to the correct destination. These networked devices allow a person to assign direct printing jobs to specific printers as per requirements. For example one can assign black and white printing task to a particular industrial printer and at the same time, send a small, color printing job to a distant high resolution colored printer. A Network Print Server can be an external or embedded or internal or wireless print server.

External print servers can connect to the printers using any USB or parallel port. These printing servers can operate based on a variety of options depending on user specifications and may be used as printers for small business or domestic users. Most of these networked servers are compatible with printers of other brands or those that are manufactured by different companies.

An embedded network print is used to handle a broad range of printers installed in a comparatively large work environment. The embedded server works in co ordination with a company’s network to monitor laser, inkjet and digital imaging projects.

A Wireless print server is connected to wireless router and can be used for assigning printing jobs to a variety of printers. The wireless speeds can be achieved up to 54 Mbps over a 2.4 GHz bandwidth. These types of wireless servers are best used for residential purposes for family members to send print documents to any nearby room or to share photos in an expedient fashion. It will be plugged using an Ethernet or a USB cable.

The internal print servers provide radically heightened speeds to the printer. They are small devices that connect via an enhanced I/O or EIO slot for any of the EIO enabled printers. Security protocols and password protection form an important part of any internal printing server or software.