Internet Printing Protocol
The Internet Printing Protocol or IPP, defines a standard protocol for printing as well as managing print jobs, media size, resolution, and so forth.
Like all IP-based protocols, IPP can be used locally or over the Internet to printers hundreds or thousands of miles away. Unlike other protocols, however, IPP also supports access control, authentication, and encryption, making it a much more capable and secure printing solution than older ones.
IPP by design goal will not invent new security features, when existing protocols can be used. For example, encryption will not be done by IPP itself, but it may be handled by SSL3 or TLS layer.
It faces criticism for its protocol overloading, because it is built on HTTP. This makes for a more complex and bloated protocol and implementation than necessary — for example the venerable lp protocol was extended to cover the same functionality — even though it is convenient to reuse implementation components such as HTTP servers.
The Internet Printing Protocol is used, among other places, in the Common Unix Printing System.
References
- RFC 2910 Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Encoding and Transport
- RFC 2911 Internet Printing Protocol/1.1: Model and Semantics
- RFC 2567 Design Goals for an Internet Printing Protocol
- RFC 2568 Rationale for the Structure and Model and Protocol for the Internet Printing Protocol
- RFC 2569 Mapping between LPD and IPP Protocols
See also
- CUPS
- Job Definition Format
- iFax/T.37 - for emailing directly to a fax machine