Printing delay

[angelb]

> So please, once more (some of them):
>
>    * How many clients altogether?

We have 22 clients. Following is their cupsd.conf file:
LogLevel info
AccessLog /var/log/cups/access_log
ErrorLog /var/log/cups/error_log
PageLog /var/log/page_log
MaxLogSize 10M
Port 631
Browsing Yes
BrowseProtocols cups
BrowseInterval 3600
BrowsePoll cupsserver1
BrowsePoll cupsserver2
BrowsePort 631
KeepAliveTimeout 3600
Timeout 3600
BrowseTimeout 172800
ImplicitClasses Yes
Printcap /etc/opt/TWWfsw/cups124/printcap
PrintcapFormat BSD


>    * What is you typical concurrent jobs figure ("lpstat -o"), and what is happing at peak printing hours?

at 8:03am: lpstat -o |wc
270

Yesterday, this one client processed 1773 print jobs
# grep -- "\[Job" errlog|grep "02/Jul"|wc
    1773   21236  141457

Peak hours occurs between 8am through 5pm daily. We have users login
to the app servers nationwide. I'm not the SAP admin so I don't really
know what they do.. :)


>    * Did you ever consider (and test) what I nicknamed "browse push"?

We can only poll since the client and servers are on different
networks.

> I do not think that the "11 seconds processing time" for a "184 Bytes job"
> will be much different from a "18.4 KBytes job". The reason is that most
> likely, your 184 Bytes are spending 10.9 seconds of waiting time before
> cupsd is even responding.

I agree. So, what is cupsd doing? We have bolt-on servers which does
not do any printing at all but if I submit a job from there, it takes
as long for cupsd to process that request the same as with the app
servers. Whether the client is doing its polling or not, bolt-on or
app server, the length of time for cupsd to process the job is the
same.

> Waiting time that cupsd probably needs to process all the
>"BrowsePoll" requests (but that's only speculation, be-
> cause you did not answer to my question about total number of polling
> clients, their polling frequency and why you are mixing BrowsePoll with "browse push"....)

At the moment we have 22 clients polling and they poll every hour.

I'm not sure what you mean by mixing BrowsePoll and "browse push" but
I'm guessing you mean a BrowsePoll on the clients and Browsing on the
servers. Well, my understanding is that the servers has to be set to
Browsing on, otherwise, clients who BrowsePoll will not be able to
retrieve updates.

>
> Your 11 seconds very likely are not "processing time" (after which the
> job is completed), but "response time" (after which the job is fully
> submitted).

So, on a client, when I submit a job, cupsd grabs that request and
sends it to the CUPS servers. It is that process of cupsd processing
job requests taking longer; is that a "response time" from the cupsd
then? If so, what can be done to improve the response time?

job process flow:

application(or lp/lpr) --(11sec)> cupsd --(1-2sec)-> cupsservers --(1-2sec)> printer


Thanks,
Angel