How Old Is Your Hp Jetdirect - HP J3111A - JetDirect 600N Network Card Manuallines

How old is Your HP Jetdirect?

Once in a while, when doing an inventory of a network, an administrator may discover some network
connected devices that rather old but are still working. The same is true for printers and HP Jetdirect
devices. An easy way to get an inventory of your HP Jetdirect devices is to use the HP Download
Manager available here: http://www.hp.com/go/dlm_sw. This utility allows you to discover printers
and their HP Jetdirect devices on the network. For an in-depth management platform, try HP Web
Jetadmin available here: http://www.hp.com/go/webjetadmin. Keep in mind, you don't have to
update the firmware on your HP Jetdirect products if you don't want to (HP does recommend it), but
for this particular section we simply want to find HP Jetdirect devices and based upon their product
number, see how old they are. Refer to Table 1 – HP Jetdirect Aging
Description
Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11
HP Jetdirect J2550A, J2552A MIO Print Servers
Microsoft Windows 95
HP Jetdirect J2550B, J2552B MIO Print Servers
HP Jetdirect J3110A, J3111A EIO Print Servers
HP Jetdirect J3263A 300X External Print Server
HP Jetdirect J3113A 600n EIO Print Server
Microsoft Windows 98
HP Jetdirect J3258A 170x External Print Server
Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional
HP Jetdirect J4169A 610n EIO Print Server
Microsoft Windows XP
HP Jetdirect J6057A 615n EIO Print Server
Microsoft Windows 2003 Server
HP Jetdirect J7934A 620n EIO Print Server
HP Jetdirect J7961A 635n EIO Print Server
Table 1 is by no means complete. Many Jetdirect cards were introduced before 1994; however,
some popular HP Jetdirect products are listed there and compared to some of the Microsoft Windows
introduction dates. It would be rare to find a reputable security analyst willing to spend time
discussing the security issues associated with Microsoft Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and Microsoft
Windows 95 in today's environment. When viewing public information about the security
vulnerabilities of HP Jetdirect devices, be sure to keep in mind how old the devices may be.
At the time of this writing (August 2007), migrating to Microsoft Windows XP SP2 and Microsoft
Windows 2003 SP2 is very important to get the most security protection for desktops and servers.
Microsoft provides many guidelines to the proper configurations of their products and many security
consultants make a living by helping customers deploy these configurations. Customers are willing to
carry this expense because the security of their data is very important to them. If your printing
infrastructure is important to you, should you not consider upgrading it and implementing
recommended security configurations as well? As a point of comparison, some companies place a
lot of their faith in a printing infrastructure that they developed in the early 1990s. How many of
these customers would also be willing to run Microsoft Windows 95 on their desktops and Microsoft
Windows Advanced Server 3.51 on their servers today?
Date Released
February 1994
May 1994
August 1995
November 1996
October 1997
January 1998
January 1998
June 1998
September 1998
February 2000
October 2000
October 2001
April 2002
April 2003
April 2004
October 2005
Table 1 – HP Jetdirect Aging
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