Socket connection-based printer discovery method using a thread management scheme

Abstract

A targeted TCP socket connection-based printer discovery method is disclosed. It does not use network broadcasts; rather, single packets are sent to each IP address. A multi-threaded method is implemented so that each child thread attempts a TCP socket connection with one IP address, and multiple child threads executes simultaneously. If a connection is successful, the child thread records the corresponding IP address in a local record table. After all child threads exits, the parent thread examines each IP address in the local record table to determine whether the IP address is a supported printer not already in the discovered printer list, and adds the IP address to the discovered printer list if appropriate. Alternatively, the steps of determining whether the IP address is supported printer not already in the discovered printer list may be performed by the child threads.

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.