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Canon Printer Diagnostic

Reference Number: AA-00228 Views: 28116 Last Updated: 08-12-2014 01:35 PM 0 Rating/ Voters
Canon Printer Diagnostic

This guide displays the features, uses and frequently asked questions relevant to Canon Printer Diagnostic.

Contents

Feature Overview


The Canon Printer Diagnostic is a new feature introduced in Netaphor SiteAudit
™ On-Site v4.4. This diagnostic is intended to help customers understand how SiteAudit populates the Lifetime Counters with data collected from the Canon printer Remote User Interface (RUI). It also displays which discovered Canon meters are being used by SiteAudit and which meters Netaphor Software, Inc. recommends enabling on the RUI. This provides users with the information needed to configure which meters are displayed in the printers’ RUI for the best results in SiteAudit.

Feature Details


There are some Canon printers for which SiteAudit must collect the Lifetime Counter data from the printer RUI because the information is not available via other means accessible to SiteAudit. Only those Canon printers for which SiteAudit cannot collect counter data via other means are included in the Canon Printer Diagnostic View.

The Canon Printer Diagnostic

The Canon Printer Diagnostic is a view and thus behaves similarly to all other views in SiteAudit. This means that it is possible to filter, sort and customize it as well as generate reports in various formats. These reports can be printed, archived, emailed, exported, saved, published to the reporting Web site, or scheduled for periodic delivery to one or more recipients.

The Canon Printer Diagnostic can be opened by selecting Canon Printer Diagnostic from the Diagnostics menu as shown in Figure 1.

     
     Figure 1:  Diagnostics menu

Figure 2 shows a sample of the Canon Printer Diagnostic View. There are seven data columns in the View, each of which is described below. 

    
     Figure 2: Canon Printer Diagnostic sample

  • Model: The Canon printer model type. This value often includes the firmware version.
  • IPAddress: The IP Address of the printer.
  • Serial#: The printer serial number.
  • HardwareAddress: The printer hardware address.

The remaining columns are unique to the Canon Printer Diagnostic and are described in more detail below.

Discovered Meters Used by SiteAudit

The Discovered Meters Used by SiteAudit column contains a list of the Canon meters for which SiteAudit monitors, collects data, and uses to calculate values for its Lifetime Counters. It is possible that other meters are enabled on the printer RUI, but SiteAudit does not use them in the calculation of its Lifetime Counters.

Since SiteAudit maintains a history of the data it collects, it is possible that one or more of the meters in this list is no longer displayed on the printer RUI. 

The Discovered Meters Used by SiteAudit column allows users to see which meters have been enabled on a Canon printer. This can help understand how SiteAudit has populated the columns in the Lifetime Counters and Volume Analysis Views. 

Best Meters to Use

The Best Meters to Use column contains a list of the meters that Netaphor recommends displayed on the printer RUI to allow SiteAudit to populate the most useful Lifetime Counter columns. Since it is only possible to enable five or six meters per printer, Netaphor has recommended a set of meters for a black and white printer and another set for color printers.

The following list of meters should be enabled on the Canon printer RUI as recommended by Netaphor SiteAudit On-Site. 

BW Printers:
101     Total 1
103     Total (Large)
114     Total 1 (two-sided)
201     Copy (Total 1)
313     Print (Black 1)

Color Printers:
101     Total 1
103     Total (Large)
108     Total (Black 1)
114     Total 1 (two-sided)
301     Print (Total 1)
701     Receive Print (Total 1) 

Populated Lifetime Counters

The Populated Lifetime Counters column provides a quick overview of the columns in the Lifetime Counters View that have been populated with data from the printer. If the recommended meters shown in the Best Meters to Use column are enabled on the RUI, then SiteAudit will populate the following Lifetime Counters:

 

BW Printers

 

Color Printers

  
  • Total   
  • BW All   
  • Print   
  • BW Print   
  • Copy   
  • BW Copy   
  • Large   
  • BW Large   
  • Small   
  • BW Small   
  • Total Usage   
  • Duplex 
   
  • Total   
  • BW All   
  • Color All   
  • Print   
  • Duplex   
  • Faxed   
  • Copy   
  • Large   
  • Small   
  • Total Usage 
 

Table 1: List of Lifetime Counters that are populated with the recommended meters

Canon Meters

SiteAudit would not populate the respective counters.

    
     Figure 3: Canon Meters (1)

     

     Figure 4: Canon Meters (2)

   
     Figure 5: Canon Meters (3)

The Canon Printer Diagnostic is intended to help users identify which printers’ meters have not been ideally configured for SiteAudit

FAQ 

How Does SiteAudit Collect Counter Information from Canon Printers?

SiteAudit collects counter data from Canon printers using two protocols: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) and Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP). SNMP is the primary data collection protocol used by SiteAuditSiteAudit uses the HTTP protocol to collect meter data from the Canon printer RUI. Meter data are essentially print counters. SiteAudit uses the data collected using HTTP to augment the data it receives via SNMP.

Although Canon printers do support the SNMP protocol, some Canon printers do not support the collection of the counter data using this protocol. Therefore, SiteAudit relies on HTTP to obtain this information. 

The Canon Printer Diagnostic Does Not Show All of My Canon Printers. Why Not?

One of the purposes of the Canon Printer Diagnostic is to help users identify which Canon printers do not support the collection of print counters using SNMP, which is the primary data collection protocol used by SiteAudit. This means that SiteAudit must try to obtain the values of the meters that are enabled on the RUI. Therefore, only those printers for which SiteAudit must obtain meter data from the RUI are displayed in this diagnostic view.

Why is the "Discovered Meters Used by SiteAudit" Column Blank for Some Printers?

SiteAudit can only access the meter data from the RUI. In some cases, SiteAudit is not able to collect the counter data from the RUI. Devices that fall into this category do not show any data in the Discovered Meters Used by SiteAudit column.

There are a few reasons why SiteAudit may not be able to collect data from the RUI, which include: 

  • The RUI is a Java-enabled Web page. SiteAudit is not able to collect data from Java websites.
  • A login page prevents SiteAudit from accessing the Web page containing the meters.
  • The RUI is in a language other than English. SiteAudit does not collect data from the RUI for languages other than English. 
  • SiteAudit does not know how to access the RUI page containing the meters. If this occurs, you may want to work with Netaphor Support to collect data for the printer. The following KB article describes the information needed to add support for a printer and describes how to collect this data: http://www.netaphor.com/products/support/documentation/kb/RequestingDeviceSupport.pdf

How Does the Canon Printer Diagnostic Help Me?

The Canon Printer Diagnostic was created to help users understand how SiteAudit has populated its Lifetime Counters based on the data provided from the printer RUI. 

What Happens in SiteAudit if I Change the Meters Enabled On a Printer?

SiteAudit retains a history of data that has been collected from all printers, which includes each counter and its value. Once a meter has been removed from the RUI, SiteAudit is no longer able to retrieve data for that meter and the value stored in the SiteAudit database will reflect the last value collected for the meter and it will no longer change.

When the timespan is set to All, the lifetime counters will include the last value collected for all meters. This could be misleading if, for example, a counter is no longer being collected but its value is displayed in a lifetime counter column. For example, suppose that meter 301 had been present in the RUI and SiteAudit displays a Print count of 500 pages. On December 1, this meter is disabled and a new meter is shown in the RUI. Now suppose SiteAudit has continued to monitor this printer for the next six months. If the Timespan is set to All, then the Print column will show the value 500, which was the last value collected for this object. If you do not want this old counter value to appear, then set the Timespan start date to a point after December 1. Since no data had been collected for this meter after December 1, then setting the timespan to some period after December 1 will ensure that the meter does not appear in the Lifetime Counters.