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lan vs wan

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by frnt9

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What are the pros and cons of converting printing services from LAN environment to a WAN environment? What is the preferred method from a financial, connectivity, and productivity point?

6 replies

by hal 9000

Personally I can see no advantages only disadvantages of converting printing Services from a LAN to WAN.

What scenario are you wanting to do this in?

The only thing that would make any sense would be in a printing industry where it moves most of the printing into one shop area and allows bigger and better printers to be deployed and then the output couriered back to the originating office for distribution or whatever else is required.

Col

by hal 9000

Well in that case go with the extra Bandwidth and cost issues. If this is for Tax purposes there has to be a need to transfer the files to a different State with different Tax Laws which I find hard to believe but I could be wrong.

Sounds to me as if some salesman is attempting to sell Mainframe time to some unsuspecting Accountant and claiming that the actual computing time is cheaper which it may well be but the time and cost involved in getting the files there means that you are paying for the Data Transfer and more importantly Loosing control of the data. There could be Privacy Issues involved here that you can not get around if something goes wrong.

If that is the case while it may be faster on the WAN and that's only a technical possibility the possibility of loosing control of the data should rule it out for security reasons.

Even if there are Cray Super Computers at the other end with high speed printers what happens to the output of the printers?

It obviously has to be transported somewhere so this should be factored into the costs as well and remember that it has to be treated as High Security so the transport should be of the highest standard with Guarantees that they will not loose your printed material and some Legal Clause taking responsibility for any loss or data breach.

I'm betting that you will not get the latter so it will not be cost effective particularly if your location carries the can for any breaches of Privacy which even one case would make the savings look like the small uneconomical amount that it actually is.

Col

by jdclyde

Only down sides to printing over a WAN. This takes up a lot of bandwidth that will be more expensive than local printers, I would think.

I had a situation where the user in our corporate location wanted to be able to print to users printers at remote locations.

Instead, I have them print to a PDF that gets saved on our ftp server. Then anyone who needs that file can go and get it as needed. Saves on bandwidth AND printing costs as not all of them need to be printed if they have it on their screen. The other problem that was eliminated was if they lost the printout, they can always go and get the pdf and print it again.

Better records, less overhead, less printing. Everyone is happy.

If you start printing over your WAN, all of your other users will get a performance hit.

by sgt_shultz

if you will take a stab at making a list of the pros and cons, as your instructor is trying to get you to do, you will see your answer...why are you even in management class. wait, on second thought: you're a natural (rdl)

by frnt9

This is a real life problem. A non techincal acct. rep promised a client we could relocate their file servers to Dallas from their locale of Chicago and the connection would be faster. The client is a publisher of tax and accounting materials. We have submitted our concerns, but am looking for some objective but useful opinions.

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