Printer Session Association

For 3270 and 5250 sessions, you can specify an association between a display and a printer session. This is unique to telnet, and is not available in the SNA environment. When you configure a display session, Personal Communications lets you specify an associated printer session. This function is implemented on Communications Server, iSeries™, eServer™ i5, or System i5™ TN5250, and zSeries™ TN3270E servers.

The association starts at the telnet server. In the server's configuration, there is a one-to-one correspondence when defining associated printers. When LU names and relations are already defined by the server, the server will assign the printer LU for the client. Each printer LU is configured as associated with a particular display LU.

Advantages of this association are as follows:
  • If sessions are associated, the person who configures the client workstation does not have to know any detail about the printer session because the associated pairs are defined at the telnet server.
  • When you start the display session, the associated printer session is started automatically. If the printer session is configured to direct output to a printer that is near you, and if you ensure that your host applications print to that session, it is obviously convenient.
Note:
  1. Stopping a 3270 session will automatically close an associated printer session, if that option was selected when configuring the session.
  2. If a 5250 printer session is associated with multiple 5250 display sessions, then the printer session will be ended only when the last associated display session is ended.
  3. For a 5250 telnet session, if the host name and port number in the selected printer session profile differ from the values in the display session profile, then the display session profile host name and port number values are used instead. The display session values will not be saved to the printer session profile.