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A scanner smartly: Sharing a scanner on a home LAN- Software from RemoteScan of Missoula wins rave reviews

It’s so predictable it’s almost scary. I’ll be in my office working away on my desktop PC when suddenly my LAN-connected wife, in her office down the hall, will want me to stop whatever it is I’m doing and scan something for her on one of the three scanners attached to my desktop (we have a conventional USB 2.0-based flatbed scanner, as well as both 35mm and medium-format SCSI-based slide/negative scanners).

Brian Dipert, Technical Editor — EDN

http://www.reed-electronics.com/ednmag/article/CA420629?industryid=22043&

I could buy her a redundant scanner suite, but that’s an expensive and space-consuming proposition. So I’ve been waiting a long time for a lower-cost option. And now, two have arrived, one software-based and the other employing dedicated hardware.

RemoteScan (http://www.remote-scan.com) consists of server software you install on the Windows (98 or newer) PC connected to the scanner(s), plus client software you load on the other Windows-equipped PCs to which you want to provide scanner access. The server software works with any scanner that provides TWAIN or WIA (Windows Imaging Architecture) drivers, the latter via a Microsoft-supplied WIA-to-TWAIN translation layer. The client software is compatible with any TWAIN-compliant imaging application.

You fire up the server software and select which scanner you want to expose, in a manner reminiscent of DHCP (dynamic host control protocol), to the LAN. The client software subsequently discovers the shared scanner automatically upon startup.

In my testing, the RemoteScan suite functioned in a rock-solid manner. It also turned in very fast performance, even when handling 3200- and 4000-dpi, high-resolution scans (where the scanner transfer rate seems to be the primary bottleneck) and when working over both 100-Mbps wired and 11- and 54-Mbps wireless Ethernet connections. My 2-GHz P4-equipped desktop PC was able to multitask other functions while acting as the scanner server, although I occasionally noticed hesitation due to RemoteScan’s processing load. When no scan was underway, RemoteScan’s incremental CPU impact proved undetectable.

My wife still needs to walk down the hall and place her media in the scanner, of course. But at least I can keep working (or playing) while the scanner does its job.

RemoteScan is conceptually similar to two other software products: a proprietary package that Epson bundles with some of its expensive high-end scanners, and an older product called CuneiForm NeST from a Russian company named Cognitive Technologies (www.cgntv.com). RemoteScan, however, employs industry-standard TCP/IP, while CuneiForm NeST relies on the older NetBEUI protocol, which no longer enjoys Microsoft’s blessing.

RemoteScan sells two variants of its software on its site: a four-client home version for $39.99 and a 20-client corporate version for $189.99. The company encourages you to contact it for quotes on other numbers of clients, as well as for bundling opportunities if you’re a scanner manufacturer.

RemoteScan’s chief engineer is currently working on a compressed-stream variant of the program, along with a port of the 500-kbyte client code to Windows Terminal Services-based thin clients. RemoteScan is considering adding client-side support for WIA-based applications such as Windows XP’s Paint applet and the Scanner and Camera Wizard.

The company could also, if demand warranted, broaden its support to other imaging peripherals; specifically WIA-compliant digital cameras, as well as cameras employing proprietary protocols such Kodak’s EasyShare system. I think it’d be great, for example, if my wife could pull images right off my docked Kodak DX6490 digital point-and-shoot camera, and me off her docked DX6340.

If you want more extensive peripheral support now, and if you’re willing to limit yourself to only USB-compliant devices, Keyspan’s (www.keyspan.com) $129.99 USB Server provides an intriguing alternative solution to the sharing problem. Like a standalone print server, the USB Server operates in an independent manner and doesn’t require a constantly running server PC.

The device supports up to four USB peripherals (scanners and printers now, more devices in the future via free firmware upgrades) and, via client-side software, gives LAN access to them over Ethernet. However, the USB Server only supports USB 1.1 speeds. The company plans to add 480-Mbps USB 2.0 support in a follow-on product next year, but that feature would bump the device’s price to $200 or more if it were implemented today, according to the company.

USB 1.1’s 12-Mbps (5- to 6-Mbps real-world) bandwidth may prove to be an unacceptable bottleneck with high-resolution scans and prints, although print speed depends to some degree on the proportion of host-side versus printer-side image processing and whether or not the host scales the image to the printer’s native resolution before sending data to the printer. Also, at least one user who’s installed the client software reports that it left his laptop unable to reliably enter and exit hibernation mode. Hopefully, a soon-to-arrive driver upgrade will fix these and (likely) other first-generation glitches.

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