A print server, or printer server, is a device that connects printers

Computer printer

In computing, a printer is a peripheral which produces a text or graphics of documents stored in electronic form, usually on physical print media such as paper or transparencies. Many printers are primarily used as local peripherals, and are attached by a printer cable or, in most new printers, a...

 to client computer

Client (computing)

A client is an application or system that accesses a service made available by a server. The server is often on another computer system, in which case the client accesses the service by way of a network....

s over a network

Computer network

A computer network, often simply referred to as a network, is a collection of hardware components and computers interconnected by communication channels that allow sharing of resources and information....

. It can accept print job

Print job

In computing, a print job is a file or set of files that has been submitted to be printed.Jobs are typically identified by a unique number, and are assigned to a particular destination, usually a printer...

s from the computers and send the jobs to the appropriate printers.

Print servers may support a variety of industry-standard or proprietary printing protocols including Internet Printing Protocol

Internet Printing Protocol

In computing, the Internet Printing Protocol provides a standard network protocol for remote printing as well as for managing print jobs, media size, resolution, and so forth....

, Line Printer Daemon protocol

Line Printer Daemon protocol

The Line Printer Daemon protocol/Line Printer Remote protocol is a network protocol for submitting print jobs to a remote printer. The original implementation of LPD was in the Berkeley printing system in the BSD UNIX operating system; the LPRng project also supports that protocol...

, Microsoft Network Printing protocol, NetWare, NetBIOS/NetBEUI

NetBIOS

NetBIOS is an acronym for Network Basic Input/Output System. It provides services related to the session layer of the OSI model allowing applications on separate computers to communicate over a local area network. As strictly an API, NetBIOS is not a networking protocol...

, or JetDirect

Jetdirect

JetDirect is the name of a technology sold by Hewlett-Packard that allows computer printers to be directly attached to a Local Area Network. The "JetDirect" designation covers a range of models from the external 1 and 3 port parallel print servers known as the 300x and 500x, to the internal EIO...

.

A print server may be a networked computer with one or more shared printers. Alternatively a print server may be a dedicated device on the network, with connections to the LAN and one or more printers. Dedicated server appliances tend to be fairly simple in both configuration and features. Print server functionality may be integrated with other devices such as a wireless router, a firewall, or both. A printer may have a built-in print server.

All printers with the right type of connector are compatible with all print servers; manufacturers of servers make available lists of compatible printers because a server may not implement all the communications functionality of a printer (low ink signal, etc.).