Summary of Differences Between Printing on 3.x and 4.x

The basic procedure for sending a print job through the network remains the same.

There are some improvements, however, with the inclusion of NDS in the 4.x product.

In NetWare 4.x, all three printing objects, print servers, print queues, and printers, are stored as NetWare Directory Services leaf objects. Thus, a printer is defined as a separate object from a print server.
In NetWare 4.x, network print jobs can still be sent to the print queue. They can also be submitted directly to the printer object in the NDS tree.
In NetWare 4.x, a single print server can support a larger number of printers than in NetWare 3.x, with the number increasing from 16 to 255.
When printing to a local host printer, it is no longer necessary to go through a remote printer daemon. In 3.1x it was necessary to go through rprinter. In 4.1 nprinter replaces rprinter, but it is not necessary to go through nprinter.

Technical documentation