[CS-FSLUG] Wireless Printing

[David McGlone]

On Mon, 2010-09-13 at 08:50 -0500, Ed Hurst wrote:
> I'm familiar with wireless networking in most home uses. What's new to me  
> is wireless printing. A friend bought a Brother laserjet with wireless  
> capability. There is a home network all Windows. The printer is connected  
> to the home DSL router, which includes wifi. However, I understand the  
> printer itself has a wifi capability, apparently not in use right now.
> 
> Users on this home network often get an error indicating the printer is  
> offline. While there are diagnostics available, nothing seems to offer a  
> way to keep this thing from going offline again.
> 
> 1. Is there likely something in the printer's internal setup doing this?
> 2. Would it work better to use the printer's own wifi or the home network  
> wifi?
> 3. Any other suggestions?
> 

If it's connected to the router that all the other wireless clients are
using also, then it seems to be the setup of the router.

I say this because if the printer is using a print server of the router,
the router will always have the same IP address. Belkin uses 192.168.2.1
and LinkSys uses IIRC 192.168.1.0 So there will always be static IP
access to the printer.

Another thing to consider is the printer itself may have a timeout or
sleep option or such in it's own settings.

On my home network, I have 4 wireless computers running through 1
router. This router has the IP address 192.168.2.1. Then I have a 2nd
router that features a print server plugged into the 1st router and it's
IP address is 192.168.2.254 and it is set up to only be used as an
access point for the printer. (I have it set up this way because my
printer isn't wireless and my *better* router doesn't have a print
server.)

So something tells me the router or the printer are not setup correctly
because those are the only 2 things that it could be if the network is
correctly setup.


-- 
Blessings,
David M.