Printing Tips for Students using Departmental Printers

While printing at Lehigh is generally geared toward students printing to LTS-provided printers at LTS computing sites, there are plenty of occasions when students will want to print to printers provided by departments that are specifically made available for printing by students. Below are a number of tips to help students get connected to them, and get the output they want.

Make sure the computer you’re using is connected to the Lehigh network. If you’re using the ‘lehigh-guest’ WiFi, that’s not the same – that network bypasses the campus LAN, and goes direct to the internet. Departmental printers are on the Lehigh LAN, so you’ll need to log into the ‘lehigh’ WiFi.
Find out the printer’s network name. All printers on the LAN have a network name that is used in place of the IP address, and follows a format based on where it is, and what model it is:

<informal building name>-rm<room number>-<Mfr abbrev. + model number>

so, for an HP 5225 in Building C, Room C030A, the network name is:

bldgc-rmC030a-hp5225

The “fully-qualified domain name” of the printer is it’s network name plus the domain specification (which is ‘printer.lehigh.edu’ for most printers), so the FQDN for the example printer above would be

bldgc-rmC030a-hp5225.printer.lehigh.edu

The best way to find a printer’s network name (to be sure it’s registered) is to look it up at https://printers.cc.lehigh.edu. That website allows you to find your printer by selecting a building, and then looking at the list of printers in that building (what you see is a list of their network names).
For Windows PCs, users can simply double-click on the links to the printers on printers.cc.lehigh.edu to add connections automatically. These will all automatically use the print server.
Macs and users wanting to print direct to the printer will need to take steps to set up the printer manually. There are benefits for either method. If the printer you want to send a job to isn’t busy, printing direct can be slightly faster, and you may be able to use a specific driver of your own choosing. If it is busy (your whole class is printing at once) the print server is more reliable (it can hold and process a larger number of jobs at once), and will use a driver chosen by LTS.
To print direct, enter the printer’s FQDN into the ‘Address’ field, and leave the ‘Queue’ field blank.
To print via the Print Server, set the Address field to ‘printers.cc.lehigh.edu’, and set the ‘queue’ field to the printer’s network name.
For Macs, the printers.cc website’s installation instructions describe making a direct connection to the printer (the stepwise instructions on the LTS Knowledge Base are the same), but it’s possible to use the print server for a busy printer by altering step 7 of those instructions to the following:
- Enter ‘printers.cc.lehigh.edu’ in the ‘Address’ field,
- Select ‘Line Printer Daemon (LPD)’ as the protocol, and
- Enter the printer’s network name into the ‘Queue’ field.

Windows users can also follow instructions to create a direct printer connection.

Other General Tips

Be aware of the paper size set for your document, and the paper available in the printer. They might be different, and that might cause the job not to print immediately. It might require you to acknowledge a paper substitution on the printer by clicking a button on the printer’s panel.
Be aware that for some printers, using a generic driver may affect what features are available. For example, color printing on HP CP 5225s doesn’t seem to be available in the Generic PostScript Printer driver for MacOS.