Why multiple underscored port names on networked printers?

Question

I have a number of networked printers setup using Print Management under Windows Server 2008 R2 and a few of them have multiple port names for the same IP address.

eg.

Ground Floor Printer GROUNDFLOOR (Standard TCP/IP Port) IP: 123.123.123.123

Port Name: 123.123.123.123 Port Name: 123.123.123.123_1 Port Name: 123.123.123.123_2 GROUNDFLOOR

Can anyone explain this sort of behaviour?

Solution 1

Someone or something tried to create a new TCP/IP port at the same IP address as an existing port. Port names need to be unique, so the new port couldn't share the same name with the existing port. By default, Windows Print Server will append an underscore and a number (_1, then _2, then _3, etc.) to the port name to satisfy the unique name requirement for ports.

Solution 2

In a nutshell, when the printers were first installed, someone screwed it up, so deleted the printer but did not delete the port for this.

The consecutive adding of printers to the same IP address is incremented with _1, _2 and so on.