Does Illustrator rasterize everything at the moment of printing?

Hello everybody;

I was told that Illustrator, sends the info to the printer in a way that the printer interprets your vectors as vectors and your raster images as raster images. Is that true?

Or does it Illustrator at the moment of printing send everything like a raster image to the printer?

I understood that depends very much of the printer system/hardware that you are using, and that's why you always have to set everything in the right sizes and resolution that you need to to avoid any complications.

Thank you,