EIS Agent- White Paper
 


What Is EIS Agent?

EIS Agent is a non-invasive software solution for gathering meter reads from copiers and printers. In general, the installation requires little or no involvement from your onsite IT department. Meter Data is passed securely through firewalls using the HTTPS protocol, similar to how a web browser communicates with a banking website. EIS Agent is proxy-compatible and does not create security vulnerabilities. It is used in banks, hospitals, schools or any place with high security needs.

EIS Agent has a very small impact on network performance. It runs as a service that is usually asleep, and wakes up a few times during the day to perform required tasks.

EIS Agent pulls the device description, IP address, serial number, location, page counts, and toner levels. It can be setup to send toner and service alerts as well.

Printing devices that are compliant with the standard printer MIB are supported, including Canon, HP, Konica, Minolta, Kyocera, Lanier, Lexmark, Ricoh, Sharp, Panasonic, and Xerox.



Why Use EIS Agent?


- Automatically gathers the meters and emails them as an Excel spreadsheet atttachment when scheduled.
- Installation program is under 4MB in size, and it can be run from a USB drive, rather than installing it, if desired.
- Device Discovery is quick. A typical segment can be searched in just a couple of minutes
- EIS Agent does not rely on the email system of the end-customer to send meter data. It posts the data securely to a web server, from which the data is downloaded and sent via EIS Agent email.
- EIS Agent can monitor locally installed printers as well as network devices, including copiers and MFP's



How Does EIS Agent Work?

EIS Agent discovers locally attached devices (printer, fax or scan ports that are managed by the Windows Spooler Service) as well as network devices that respond to Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) requests. EIS Agent sends out a broadcast to the local network requesting that devices respond. It then queries the devices to determine wheter or not they are printing devices. A list of nearby network segments is retrieved from the default gateway and is displayed so the user can tell EIS Agen which segments are to be searched for network devices. Only the segments selected will be searched. These same segments can be automatically searched periodically to determine if new devices have been installed on the customer's network.

If a device is not discovered automatically during the network scan, it can be added manually by clicking on the "Add" button and entering either the Network Name or the IP address of the device. Alternatively, entire subnets or a range of subnets can be searched.

When devices are discovered that respond to the SNMP requests, the data is sotred in a local database table. When it is time to send the data in a report, the data is sent to the web server using the HTTPS protocol, similar to how your browser communicates with banking websites. HTTPS is a seucre protocol. All of the data is encrypted before it is sent.
The meter data is then pulled down from the web server in a separate process, put into an Excel spreadsheet, and emailed out to the email addresses entered in EIS Agent. This provess usually takes 1-2 minutes.


Installation

Install EIS Agent on a Windows 2000 or XP workstation to monitor network devices. It does not need to be installed on a server. The workstation just need to be connected to the Internet and turned on most of the time.

1. Download and install the setup program by clicking on the download link at the bottom of the web page at http://www.eisagent.com
2. On the registration screen:
Enter Dealer ID: eisonline
Enter Password: 9253714100
3. Enter the email address(es) where you would like meter read reports sent.
4. click the "Get License Key" button
5. Select "Save and Close" to begin searching for locally installed printers and network devices.
6. Click on the Email button to send a report.

Reports are emailed as an Excel spreadsheet attachment.
EIS Agent is easy for anyone to use, it requires very little effort to set up, and it "does its own thing without you having to watch over it."

Specifications

-Windows 2000, XP, or later for network device monitoring (does not have to be installed on the server)
- Windows 98, ME, Windows 2000, XP, or later for local printer monitoring
- Requires 10MB hard drive space
- Uses about 5MB virtual memory