Branch Office Direct Printing - server offline?

Question

Hi All,
We are implementing Branch Office Direct Printing and I have a question about when the server is down or, in the case of a WAN connection to/from the branch going down, the client being unable to reach the server.
I could have sworn I originally read about Windows 8/2012 being smart enough to send the print job straight from the client to the printer in cases where it can't talk to the server, but now I seem unable to locate that information.  Is that indeed
the case (hopefully)?
Thanks,
Wes

Answer 1

Branch Office Direct Printing may benefit your organization in the following ways:
Client      computers running Windows Server 2012 obtain printer information from the      print server, but send the
print jobs directly to the printer. The print      data no longer travels to the central server and then back to the branch      office printer.
The      printer information is cached in the branch office, so that if the print      server is unavailable for some
reason (for example if the WAN link to the      data center is down), then it is still possible for the user to print.
The      client computer renders the print job before sending it to the printer.      The major difference between Branch Office Direct
Printing and Client-Side      Rendering (CSR) is that Branch Office Direct Printing does not send the      print job to the server. Instead the job is sent directly to the printer,      resulting
in a significant reduction in network bandwidth usage when the      printers are centrally managed.
Branch Office Direct Printing Overview
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj134156.aspx