[unisog] Printers, printers, printers

[Michael Holstein]

> As a side question to the printer discussion, has anyone seen any free /
> relatively cheap decent  printer accounting software for windows?  I 
> seem to remember one that even estimated page coverage, but of course can't
> remember what it was called.
>   

Most networked printers allow you to get page counts via SNMP .. the MIB 
you're after is 1.3.6.1.2.1.43.10.2.1.4.1.1

> We'd like to have a way of determining how much printing we're doing
> on small desktop printers versus large department sized ones (trying
> to illustrate the real cost/page difference of the $200 lexmark desktop
> network printer)
>
>   

Should be pretty easy with perl + Net::SNMP and a bit of research into 
consumable costs per page on those models (you can usually also get 
manufacturer + model via SNMP).

Take a look at the 'lprng' project on Sourceforge .. much of the code is 
there to do this, would just need to be customized for your particular 
application.

Cheers,

Michael Holstein CISSP GCIA
Cleveland State University