Hi,
So I have an actiontec wireless modem and router, and among the devices I have connected on my wireless network is an HP laserjet P1102, connected to port 192.168.1.11.
About 50 percent of the time when I want to print something on this printer, I get an error message. Checking the admin screen on the router, I use the ping test for the device, and it fails. I come back later in the day, and it succeeds. The printer is on throughout all of this.
Is there any reason why the router periodically and frequently cannot communicate with my printer? Any advice appreciated.
Btw, I did delete and reinstall all of the printer drivers on my pc--that is not the problem. Problem is the router cannot communicate.
I have an HP printer and this has happened to me as well. I think it's the sleep state the printer is in. Meaning, the printer after an amount of time will go into a sleep/standby state and will not communicate with the network until it is sent a request. Sometimes just rebooting the printer will resolve the issue. Does your printer settings have a sleep mode on it?
Well, if the printer is going asleep, it is possible that its DHCP lease is expiring while it is snoozing. The router then won't talk to it.
Thanks for your replies.
My printer does have a sleep mode but the problem seems to occur regardless of whether it is in sleep mode or awake.
For example, I have been succesful pinging the printer while it is in sleep mode. I have left the printer in awake mode and still lost the ability to communicate. I have rebooted the printer--sometimes that works, but I need to leave it off for a few minutes.
So this is a very strange problem. I was on the phone with the tech support folks from my company (they are allowed to help with home office/network issues) yesterday and he didn't have any idea, but he had a similar problem with another employee with an actiontec wireless router from Verizon.
Maybe your problem is with the Bonjour service? I do not know why it would be intermittent like you describe, but I have just discovered a problem with the Bonjour network discovery service being unable to see across the Wired/Wireless boundary in the MI424 router (at least on my Rev. I router). My problem is with video transfer applications, but since Bonjour is most often used for network printer discovery, I thought I'd at least mention it here.
Disable IGMP Proxy
The documentation on this router is terrible - doesn't look like the manual is up to date with the current rev level or firmware level (my firmware is newer than what is on the internet!). IGMP is needed for multcasting, but there is all sorts of stuff about also needing to add the multicast group's IP address to the router. No where near enough info for this to be straight forward...
But, I found that disabling the IGMP Proxy solved the problem with Bonjour and TiVo. The IGMP protocol under the advanced routing function is still checked - I just disabled the IGMP Proxy below the Network Objects in the advanced configuration section. This was suggested in another thread.
In case any one runs across this issue who has a Rev I model of the Actiontec router....
In that Rev (at least as of this posting), Verizon/Actiontec removed the link to the IGMP Proxy page on the router. The solution was posted here by user "tns", from user BigDaddy on DSLReports:
Login to your router normally, then click this link, which will take you to the now-hidden IGMP Proxy config page:
192.168.1.1/index.cgi?active_page=6059
I can confirm that it works on my Rev I router.
I too have a revision I router, and unfortunately turning the proxy off did not fix my issues. I cant do screen sharing or file sharing from my MacBook Pro to my iMac, no wifi syncing from my iPhone to the iMac. I was wondering if anyone came accross any other solutions. I currently have the Actiontec and I have an Apple Time Capsule connected in bridge mode but nothing works. Any Bonjour related services are dead once the iMac falls asleep. I have spoke to Apple and they said that Bonjour packets are sent to the time capsule in order to wake up the computer.
Perhaps you have an IP address conflict. By default the router starts assigining IP addresses with 2. Your printer is 11. If you have a bunch of other WiFi and wired devices on your network the router may have tried to assign 11 to some other device.
It's easy to have more devices that you think - cellphones and tablets each get their own IP address. If you have a party with a bunch of friends over you can suck up IP addresses really fast.
To get around this I set my router to start assigning addresses with 30.
Thanks for the suggestion about resetting the IP addresses to start assigning at 30. I live in close proximity to several other wireless networks which may have something to do with the problem?
Any event, I have reset my router to begin assigning at 30. I should know in a day or so if that fixed my problem
Unfortunately, that solution--changing the IP addresses the router assigns to start at 30--did not work. I set it up at 7:30 AM this morning, and have pinging my printer (while it is in sleep mode) successfully up until now. I just checked it (10:20 AM) and now it will not communicate. Appreciate all the comments and suggestions thus far... but any new ideas? Thanks again.
i would try to setup the printer via a static ip address. use something like 192.168.1.99 for the printer address and let the rest of the devices on your network connect as normal. also if you are using both wifi and ethernet to your printer, then that could also be a conflict. the printer will switch from ethernet to wifi depending on the connection it has. so make sure you are not using both. just one connection type to the router. good luck
Have you verified the router is not causing problems with ALL network access at the same time instead of only the printer? Check the Active Status under System Monitoring to see how long it has been since the last reboot. If that does not seem like the problem, then when you cannot ping the printer, quickly try any other device on your network to see if it is reachable while the printer is not.
I doubt that your problem has anything to do with your IP address, but it is possible. You will never have a problem with duplicate IP addresses if ALL devices on your LAN use DHCP to get a dynamic address assigned by the router. In this case, it makes absolutely no difference what address range your router uses, so long as there are enough addresses available for all devices. The default of 2-254 should certainly be enough (unless you live next door to a convention center and do not protect your wireless access!). If you do have any devices on your LAN that use a static address, then make sure those addresses are outside the DHCP range set in the router.
With that in mind, this thread might be of some use.
They make mention of multi casting and also disabling AP Isolation
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