Network Bandwidth Planning

Network Bandwidth Planning
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With modern switched Ethernet networks, bandwidth is rarely a factor when planning PaperCut NG deployments. The bandwidth consumed by PaperCut NG is usually dwarfed by the print document data - e.g. the Postscript spool data sent across the network. Bandwidth does however become a consideration when planning deployments crossing physical site boundaries such as networks linked via a WAN.

PaperCut NG uses an XML based web services protocol for communication between client-to-server and server-to-server. This protocol is very bandwidth efficient and designed to work well on low bandwidth and high latency networks.

Bandwidth Estimates

Bandwidth consumption can be summerized as follows:

Server-to-Server

Other than normal print server traffic (standard job spooling), PaperCut NG will generate XML-RPC based Web Services based traffic on port 9191. Connections are made from the print server to the main PaperCut NG server (Primary Server). Normal activity is less than 1.0kb of traffic is generated for each print job. Connections are instigated from the secondary server. Network packets are only sent during printing activity.

Client-to-Server

Connections are instigated by the client inbound to the server on port 9191 and 9192 (Encrypted SSL). While at idle, the client consumes a few bytes once every minute (a keep-alive heartbeat). During print activity, up to 0.5kb may be consumed depending on client popup settings.