BrowseRelay - clients lose printers information if relay host

[angelb at bugarin.us]

> angelb at bugarin.us wrote:
> > Hi all.
> >
> > I've been testing BrowseRelay recently and found it to be good at
> > what it's designed for.  Until recently, the relay host came down and
> > the clients on the same subnet were no longer able to print.
> >
> > host# lpr -phplj4 cupsd.conf
> > lpr: error - no default destination available.
> >
> > I don't understand. I thought clients maintains printer informations
> > in-memory and lose it only when the client iself goes down.
> > Apparently, the clients also lose their printer information when the
> > relay host goes down.
>
> Nope, they lose it after the printer updates timeout (BrowseTimeout).
> Polled and relayed browsing information is processed the same as
> server-broadcast information...

I was thinking of the same, BrowseTimeout. But I was not 100% certain.

> What we usually recommend is to setup multiple clients on each
> subnet when client up-time is an issue.  The other clients won't
> care about the extra browse packets, and you'll get the necessary
> redundancy.  If you are concerned about bandwidth/server usage,
> you can setup the relay clients with larger BrowseInterval settings.
> In general, this will result in staggered polling at the original
> rate... :)

I've setup two relay clients and it works perfectly. Even after
shutting down one of the relay client, the clients on the same subnet
still receives updates. I've also increased the BrowseTimeout. This
works out pretty well.

Thanks!
Angel