Very SLOW Network Printing on J3113A HP LJ5000

Problem: When printing to an HP HP5000 w/J3113A 10/100, data transfer is very slow. DUMeter shows bursts of data hitting only 500 KB/s max for a couple of seconds, and then followed by very uneven spikes and valleys of about 150 KB/s to 250 KB/s, then maybe another little burst, then same thing again. The average is around 300 KB/s, so to send even a 15 MB print job takes many minutes!!!

Setup:
WinXP Pro SP1a

Soyo MB Integrated "Davicom" NIC-->Hawking 10/100 8 Port Switch-->HP JetDirect 600N J3113A 10/100 in HP5000 LJ w/68 MB RAM.

NIC2: Realtek PCI--> Cablemodem.

I set the Davicom to the same IP and Subnet as the printer. I didn't enter any default gateway since that confuses the internet connection...

Does anyone know what the datarate SHOULD be for printing to a J3113A? Why is my data so slow and CHOPPY?!

Thanks for any help,
Tek.

BTW: I have another old Tektronix 740 color printer which only has a 10 MB/s NIC and the data used to transfer fine till I added the whole cablemodem deal. I tried disconnecting that printer but it didn't change anything... I was expecting much faster transfer with the HP5000, but things got much worse. Unfortunately I added the printer after the cable modem...

 

Im leaning towards a cable issue not knowing the condition, routing, and termination of the cables.

Have you tried pinging the Jet direct with a large packet size?

ping (ip address) -n 1000 -l 1000

 

Thanks for your reply Scott! Well, the printers are right next to the computer. The HP is hooked up with a 15 foot brand new Cat5e or 6 premolded cable from Radio Shack. The computer is hooked up to the Hawking switch with a new 3 foot cat5e quality premolded cable. I didn't try pinging with a large packet size. What should I look for when I do it?

 

I was thinking if you droped packets going to the printer then you could try other targets and see if the bottle neck is actually at the printer or somewhere else.

Question,
Are the print jobs slow getting there or are you just noticing this issue in DU meter?

 

The print jobs are very slow. For example: If I send a print job and the windows printer monitor shows me the spool is 12 meg, then I will actually be able to count that in DUMeter and it won't go away until the 12 megs are done and counted in DUMeter--so at an average of 300 KB/s that's very slow. Any documents that contain some scanned stuff take minutes. Even 30 min for 1 page! I would think that the data flow should be pretty even and steady and be at least 1 to 5 megs per sec, not little spurts of 20 to 300K. At times it seems nothing is being sent--just little spikes.

 

I set the Davicom to the same IP and Subnet as the printer

Never dealt directly with this sort of print server and can't search up much good tech detail on the setup but if they operate anything like I think they do, it should be on the same subnet but with a unique IP rather than sharing one with another device if you have it wired to your switch.

You'd only need to give it a gatway address if you had a subnetted network (rather than the more usual flat (single subnet) network where all devices connect without needing to use a router) and you wanted PCs on other networks to be able to print to it.

I'm sorta surprised it works at all rather than surprised it works slowly.

 

Thanks Newt for your ideas. Well let me clarify a bit: I have the TCP/IP properties of the Davicom NIC set to 192.168.10.1 and the Subnet is 255.255.255.0 No gateway address entered.

The Laserjet's J3113A is set to 192.168.10.35 with the same Subnet.

The J3113A is set with a port name of "PS" "Standard TCP/IP Port" the protocol is Raw and the Raw Settings: Port Number is 9100.

I do notice that if I try to access the HTTP function of the J3113A, it responds pretty SLLLOWLY. Particularly the little Java they have in there takes a while to show up.

I tried the Ping test with -n 1000 and -l 1000 and the response is steady with mostly a 1 ms delay, and a couple 2 ms. No dropped packets.

I noticed that sending data to the color printer (IP of 192.168.10.40)--first time I tried it was a steady 250KB/s which is pretty slow I would imagine for a 10 ethernet--should be max 1 MB/s and at least 500 to 800 KB/s? Then when I tried to print again it was only 16 KB/s!!!! Steady though. The HP is unpredictable--starts out with like 300 KB/s for a 4 seconds then it just trickles with a few bursts here and there. Very bizzare--I just know it can't take that long to print stuff over ethernet. I've seen other printers run so fast. Maybe I just have to rip it all apart and try again, maybe with a router instead of the switch...

Tek.

 

Can you give a little more background?

How many nodes on the network?

How many switches?

Brand of switches?

If I remember correctly the Jet Directs run at 10Mb half duplex. But that still shouldn't be slow.

How about file transfering from one PC to another? Is it slow also?

 

Scott - the specs on the version he has indicate 10/100.

TekWiz - I decided I need to know more so I am printing the user guide now but I'm so brain fried that I won't even look until tomorrow. Hopefully by that time you will be magically cured but if not, I'll try to toss in an idea or two or three.

Note that the switch(es) you are using are fine. No need for a router unless you expand your network and need to segment it.

 

Thanks so much Newt and Scott! Thanks Newt for looking into the user manual for the J3113A. I don't even have it.

Scott--it's a very simple setup as I illustrated in my initial post. Simply a single PC with 2 NICs. One built in, one PCI. The PCI is used exclusively by the cablemodem. The Davicom one (integrated) is hooked up to a little Hawking 8 port 10/100 switch. The switch is connected to the J3113A (in the Laserjet 5000) with a 15 foot Cat5e and another 7 foot is connected to the Tektronix Phaser 740 that has a 10 Mbps input. I did try to disconnect the Tektronix to see what would happen but it didn't affect anything...

I won't have time to troubleshoot tommorrow, but prob. wed. I want to know how fast/steadily should the data flow to the J3113A if all is working properly...

 

Yes that is simple.
Is the PC running ICS? Not that it would have anything to do with this issue but was just figureing since you have a WAN NIC and a LAN NIC that ICS was running.
Just trying to stimulate the brain to maybe make a light come on.

Heres a thought incase it was a routing issue.
What if TCP/IP was elliminated as the means of communication and NWLink (IPX/SPX/NetBios compatable transfer Protocol) was used instead?

Just throwing out raw thoughts here.

 

Thanks again Scott. No, the PC is not running ICS. The only reason I connected another NIC is that I was trying to avoid any complications or interference with the cablemodem, and I only had the switch there and no router. (I did use the switch with a DSL modem for a month--but I didn't like the fact I had to set the printers to the same IP as the DSL!)

On your second point about TCP/IP, well what's interesting is that tonight, I was looking at the printers setup and by accident I checkmarked the LJ5000 to use the Tektronix port! It's an LPR port. Then I went to print to the 5000 and I was amazed when the datarate was nice and steady at almost 700 KB/s and it sent like 20 megs in a jiffy. Then I noticed I messed up the setting. (I wonder what printed out on the Tektronix--maybe it came out since it's all postscript--I'm not at the location--this is pcAnywhere BTW).

What's funny that I don't quite get that speed when printing "legitimately" to the tektronix--like I said I got maybe 250 and then 16!!!

I have been suspecting that maybe the way I set up the J3113A is wrong--I didn't know how to set it up and I guessed on the TCP/IP and Raw, and port 9100--I think the port 9100 was there or something. But as soon as I was able to connect to it and even get the HTTP interface I thought it was fine. Maybe there is some mistake in my configuration...