Summit 09 Bonus: All Summit 09 attendees will receive a full licensed copy of NetScanTools Pro - a $249 value.It's not easy going "green"... I mean - all we wanted to do was print the customized course manuals double-sided. What's the big problem?
WIRESHARK and I NEARLY BARFED!
First let me say I was printing to an HP OfficeJet Pro L7780 All-in-One printer - it supports auto-duplexing. The feature is implemented in the most funky way however! Watching the traffic live while the printer did it's 'dance of duplex' - I was shocked to see the lame process of auto-duplex printing.
I had to wonder if the HP printer group might be interested insome classes on networking.*
Ok... here's how this printer does duplex printing. It's automatic, so you don't have to do the old 'refeed the paper and hope it's in the right order' process. You just select auto-duplex and away it goes. The printer prints the first page and - while still holding the paper by the bottom edges, the console reads "Ink drying - please wait." After a while the paper is then sucked back into the printer (a moment that always makes my heart jump - I've heard the shredding sound of mangled paper too many times). The second side of the paper prints and we all sigh relief - another 2-sided page done!
The trace file showed that the printer creates the pause process by sending a Zero Window packet to the client - in essence "talk to the hand" (isn't that HP's little helper logo?). Each 'drying process' essentially was caused by halted flow of print data from my client to the printer. My client sent Zero Window Probe packets to ask 'What is wrong with you, buddy?" and the printer kept the traffic at bay by sending Zero Window Probe ACKs for about 30 seconds.
The printer's TCP window size did decrease down to an unacceptable zero so it wasn't lying about not having any receive buffers. It seems the printer doesn't clear out the buffer space consistently during the print process - it's buffer becomes depleted right at the point when the 'ink needs to dry" - perhaps it knows we'll all need to take a breath then so allowing the buffer to fill doesn't seem like a big deal - it's going to have to sit around idle anyway (anyone think about adding a nice 'ink fan' attachment to make my printing go faster?).
I decided to add a tcp.window_size column and filter on traffic coming from the printer. Using File > Export > File and choosing the displayed packets, I created a csv file with a column just depicting the TCP receive window sizes advertised by the printer. In Excel I selected only the tcp.win_size column and inserted a line graph.
BEAUTI-FRIGGIN-FUL!
Look at the intentional patte
rn of the window size values advertised with definite zero window conditions during the ink drying time. There's just got to be a better way!What? Is my printer totally dumb? I didn't think so, but this is certainly dumb behavior. The file is only 13,296 KB! The printer has 64 MB memory standard. Why didn't the printer allow me to send the entire document to the printer, then buffer the data while the ink dried? Why did I have to sit around and wait for the ink to dry before being able to send the next page of data? The Wireshark summary of the data sent to the printer showed the transmission rate averaged around 0.431 Mbit/second - snooze...
I also look at the spooled file in my Windows\System32\spool\PRINTERS directory - holy schmoley! The spooled file (.spl) was 670,016 KB! Whazzup with that? The idea of researching the MS spooling process and .spl file format made my stomach turn again - but it did look like this Powerpoint Notes document was processed as a graphics file.
Then came the really interesting part - I printed twenty-five copies of the custom student manual. You'd think the printer would have buffered the first copy in memory and just pulled from that when it needed to make each successive copy - right? Nope. My client sent the entire file to the printer a second time, a third time, a fourth time... etc. Whoa... that's one dumb process! No turning off my system until the entire job was sent 25 times from the spool\PRINTERS directory. Barf.
Basic network analysis should be a mandatory requirement for any vendor making network-capable devices/applications - or else they might make a network-incapable devices/applications - oh wait - they do!
Enjoy life one bit at a time!
Laura
*Although this is the lamest way to get the job done, I swear by my HP printers - they take a beating and keep on spitting out surreal amounts of pages every month - I am a tactile, visual person - there's nothing like that printed version of the spec to snuggle up with at night! So much for going green. (The only green that will fly around here will be some big $ for printers that can buffer the entire doc once - without the 'talk to the hand process' - and then print extra copies from that!)
