Printing over network printer is slow with a delay of 5 seconds in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5

Issue

• Observing slow printing while printing multiple jobs on socket print queues.
• Printing over network printer is slow with a delay of 5 seconds.
• On RHEL5.4 when printing to socket back-end on port 9100, the printing is slow. i.e it takes 5 seconds before the printer can react or print.
• Slow printing with multiple jobs with socket backend CUPS 1.3.x.
• The customer moved production cups printing from RHEL4 to RHEL5 , They are experiencing delays. The delays are seen mostly using socket back-end. They are defined as raw printer and mostly barcode printers. Further investigation has found that jobs wait for 5 seconds when using socket backend and since most of the jobs remain in queue delaying further.
• Customer have many printing servers based on RHEL and complains that there's irritating delay between two jobs being printed - approximately 5 secs. He states, that the problem persists on every server, printer driver and printer model he tried.
• My CUPS server has different printers attached and between two print jobs there always is a delay of 5 seconds, no matter what printer or job type (images, text).
• After updating to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, 5 second delay is seen when printing to Jet Direct Printers.
• Customer is facing delay while printing. They are using cups-1.3.7-18.el5_5.4-x86_64 on RHEL 5 system. All their printers are connected using socket back-end.