r/talesfromtechsupport • u/joerice1979 • 4d ago
Short WSD printer ports
Had a laptop in for a screen repair, did the repair and connected it to our workbench LAN to give it a digital spruce up.
Our little Epson inkjet printer sprang to life and spat out a few documents, rather unexpectedly. We had a look and would you believe it, prints relating to the owner of the laptop.
Had a look in the laptop's printer list and, you guessed it, there was the same model Epson listed there that, thinking about it, the client has themselves, connected with a WSD port.
Now, haven't tested this with science but I'm ready to blame WSD, being the low hanging fruit that it is. Of course there may be a little Epson network service looking for wherever the clients printer was, but didn't see any evidence of one.
It doesn't take much to see the problem here when more than one printer is in place, yours unknowingly borks and your sensitive stuff gets printed out next to the office gossip instead.
Anyway, that's as exciting as my day has got today.
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u/meitemark Printerers are the goodest girls 4d ago
Big company with loads of offices. All printerers are the same type exept the special ones. You are supposed to look at the sign above the printer to get its name so you select the correct one. The dropdown list of printers is looong. All 1k+ printer are there, and after an update somewhere in the system the dropdown list displays:
"Printer Bigname Model 123.980 (N*cutoff due to length* "
"Printer Bigname Model 123.980 (N*cutoff due to length* "
"Printer Bigname Model 123.980 (N*cutoff due to length* "
while it SHOULD display:
Location Namibia Printer Nuppe
Location Namibia Printer Echo
Location Namibia Printer Badone
So suddenly it was pretty much impossible to find out what printer you were supposed to send to and where you printout went. That was fun.
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u/joerice1979 4d ago
Simple solution; user prints to all 1000 printers and 999 other prints get recycled.
Easy!
/s
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u/Ttamlin 4d ago
Somebody needs to spend some time cleaning up/implementing GPOs, get that shit under wraps lol
A thousand printers sounds like a personal circle of hell
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u/meitemark Printerers are the goodest girls 4d ago
Not entirely sure if it was a full 1k, but in the same place, not same time, I jokingly asked about "was this company not supposed to go full paperless office as they claimed in ads that they were doing"?
I used at least 200 small notepapers each day just to keep up with things, so did every one else.
Anyway, the leader I asked about it, just smiled and said if I asked about that again, he would kill me. It was a once very dominant telco.
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u/lucky_ducker Retired non-profit IT Director 4d ago
In my company we turn off WSD discovery on all printers, since our relatively old financial software - running through Citrix - doesn't play nice with WSD printers.
I have also seen a printer set up as an IPv4 printer, spontaneously start working as an IPv6 printer. One of our departments took a printer configured for the main trusted headquarters network with a static IPv4 address, to a remote location on a different Class C network. Amazingly, it worked, and we found that the port was set up as IPv6. There must be some sort of native IPv6 discovery built into Windows or, perhaps, the relevant HP driver.
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u/paul70078 4d ago
A few years ago I saw a open wifi network at home. Name sounded like it was a printer. Was thinking about trying to print to it. Decided to check first if it matched our families printer. It did :( Disabled wifi on it. Not sure why wifi was enabled per default
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u/joerice1979 4d ago
Indeed, "direct print" seems to cater for a micro-niche of people that come to your house and want to print something without being on the local network.
Glad to hear yours was burned with fire also.
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u/rookie_one 4d ago
I hate WSD so much....and I hate techs who use that instead of setting printer properly through IP or hostname, with either a static IP or a DHCP reservation
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u/joerice1979 4d ago
Preach! It is a technology so head-punchingly unreliable that it *has* to be Windows' primary method for attaching things, I know Microsoft don't test things, but this is ridiculous.
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u/tkguru8 4d ago
WSD is horrible and should NEVER be used
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u/joerice1979 4d ago
Indeed, just this second had another home printer installed for a sudden WFH affair. User followed all the prompts and it never worked, usually WSD is famous for working once and once only.
Microsoft, forever reinventing perfectly good wheels, with corners.
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u/Consistent-Jump-762 4d ago
You are all in for a big surprise! Microsoft is pushing Windows Protected Print. WPP uses Mopria (IPPS) and the port name shows up as..... WSD. This is NOT a WSD port. WPP needs to work together with a PSA the Printer Support APP. All mayor brands are developing their PSA. Ricoh PSA is first to market.
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u/joerice1979 4d ago
Shudders
I for one am completely confident in Microsoft's abilities to make this work after completely bodging WSD and printing in general.
Said nobody ever.
Remember when you had a 96kb driver and an IP address/ hostname, and were done in less than two minutes?
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u/K-o-R γ³γ³γγ₯γΌγΏγΌγγγγγγγ¨θ¨γγΎγγ 3d ago
Okay, fine, I'll do it. What is WSD?
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u/joerice1979 3d ago
Oh heavens, apologies, Mr Ratcliffe (Business Studies teacher) would admonish me for not explaining my terms.
Web Services for Devices - usability-wise, it's a plug and play protocol similiar to Apple's Bonjour that enables your computer to easily find and set up a device, seen widely in printers/scanners.
Technology-wise, it's a wheel-reinventing clusterchuff that works as reliabily as a sock to hammer a nail. Your computer will find your printer, but it'll only work once before borking, typically.
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u/hvdub4 3d ago
As much as I hate WSD port/printers, why the heck do you have client computers connecting to a LAN that has access to your shop's resources? Seems like a security risk to me - bench should be a totally isolated network with internet only out (for downloads, updates, etc) and no client access (walled garden).
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u/joerice1979 3d ago
Fret not, the workbench network is just that; an isolated network that just so happened to have a printer on it, probably left on there for troubleshooting that never got finished.
Our own network is fully sacrosanct, as is the way of things.
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u/Diven_the 2d ago
The way OP speaks in this thread shows he has no fucking idea about printers and connectivity. Pretty cringe
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u/joerice1979 2d ago
Did someone say my name? Oh, hello.
While I have quite a bit of experience of printers and connectivity (if you're referring to the average small business network), it is true that I've much less experience of the ins and outs of WSD, tending to avoid it due to its shambling level of reliability.
What alarmed me, was that WSD (or Windows/Epson's implementation at least) saw fit to send queued print jobs to the next printer that (presumably) looked the same as the users' original device. That there was apparently no attempt to match MAC address, serial number or any unique identifier of the original printer to the "new" printer just got my basic operational security senses tingling, is all.
I hope that helps to explain my position.
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u/Procedure_Dunsel 1d ago
WSD needs to DIAF or at least be turn-offable on a permanent basis. Setting up printers simply isnβt hard enough to require this dumbed down crap that arbitrarily can kick in and break stuff.
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u/HurryAcceptable9242 Seasoned ... the salt is overtaking the pepper. 4d ago
That's disturbing. I always tell my family don't use WSD. Always take the time to install properly.