HP Designjet 10ps, 20ps, 50ps, 30, 100, 111, 120, and 130 Printer Series - Configuring the IP Address

The Designjet printers listed above do not have the ability to configure network parameters through the front panel. The most critical one is the IP address. There are two situations where the IP address has to be configured:

1. When the HP Jetdirect card already has an assigned IP address and the user wants to change it.
2. When the Jetdirect card has never been configured and the IP address has to be set for the first time.

In the first situation, there are several ways in which the IP address can be changed. The second case is more difficult and will be treated separately.

The IP Address is the Internet Protocol address of the HP Jetdirect card. It is not a universal value, and so, when configuring it, care has to be taken not to give the card an existing value for the IP address. For this reason, cards come preset from the factory with an IP address value of 0.0.0.0. If, after five minutes, no other IP address has been assigned by a BOOTP or DHCP protocol, the IP address changes to 192.0.0.192. When the card is reset through the front panel or via software, the same thing happens.

The Hardware address is the Universal identifier of the network card. Every card in the world has a unique hardware address that is set in the manufacturing process.

DHCP enables the devices in a network to obtain an IP address automatically from a server or servers. This way, each time a device connects to the network (for example during the printer’s boot process), it asks for an IP address to be assigned to it dynamically.

The DHCP protocol is based on BOOTP, with the difference that BOOTP was designed for manual pre-configuration of host information in the server.

Summarizing, DHCP and BOOTP require a server in the network to assign IP addresses dynamically to the devices that are connected to it. If this server is not present, IP addresses have to be configured manually, taking care not to repeat IP address values between different devices.

A Designjet printer with a Jetdirect card can be connected, thus, to two different types of networks:

• Networks with a DHCP or BOOTP server. In this case, the Jetdirect card can be configured in two ways:
  • To use these protocols to obtain its IP address automatically.
  • Not to use these protocols; in this case, the IP address can be assigned manually.
• Networks without DHCP or BOOTP protocols. In this case, all IP addresses have to be assigned manually.

An embedded Web server is available by entering the IP address of the HP Jetdirect card in the Internet Explorer address field.

There are two tabs in this Web page:

• Home: Gives the basic information about the card settings.
• Networking: Allows changing of the network settings of the card, which are grouped in different categories.

  Abbildung : Networking Tab

  

The IP address can be changed in its corresponding field.

From firmware v x.21.xx, HP Jetdirects allow viewing and modifying their settings via Telnet. In a DOS console, by writing the command TELNET x.x.x.x, where x.x.x.x stands for the Jetdirect’s IP address, a Telnet connection to the print server is established. Once this is done, the command MENU causes a text menu to be displayed, with options for modifying the network parameters. IP address can be changed in the following menu:

2. TCP/IP Menu

1. TCP/IP main settings

Change settings _YES