Question: I am experiencing a very strange / random printer issue. I will do my best to present the issue in a manner that will be understandable, but I know I will forget some details so feel free to ask questions.

I will provide some overall information of my setup first. We have three locations each with its own subnet. Two of the locations have their own AD and a different domain name, ie plant1 and plant2. We have point 2 point connections between the plants. Plant 3 is where our business system resides, and plant 1 is where the printer issue occurs. All of the traffic going from plant 3 to plant 1, passes through plant 2 (192.168.2.0) on the way.

Now, the printers are Zebra label printers of which we have 15 at plant 1 (192.168.1.0). The printers are connected via wifi 802.11g. The printers have a static IP (range of 192.168.1.10-24) and are installed locally on the business server at plant 3 (192.168.3.0) Signal strength and quality are excellent.

The users at plant 1 use wyse terminals to connect to a terminal server at plant 3. They then open a web browser and launch the business application, which is Java based. From the application they will input information which produces the ZPL code that is sent to the Zebra printers.

Now for the issue. Everyday at random points in time, a user will print a label and it will get sent to the wrong printer. For example: user 1 on terminal 1 prints to printer 1 but the label will somehow come out on printer 2 or vice versa. This only occurs maybe once or twice during a 24 hour period. We print hudreds if not thousands of labels every day.

We have talked with the business system developer and they have looked extensively at the issue but have not found anything that would cause this sort of issue. I have checked event logs on all the systems involved in the process but do not see any indication of a problem.

Please ask questions if there is something that would help you understand this issue better. This is something I have been scratching my head over for a good two months and I'm not sure how long before that it has been going on.
 

Hmm... this network setup sound very familiar... are you, by chance, a pharmacy?

If it's always the same user, have them print a label right away after it happens, check the printer prior to printing (this may not always be possible).

I assume you're using citrix - but what version and what hardware is it running on?

Perhaps this will help: http://forums.citrix.com/thread.jspa?threadID=67726&start=0&tstart=0