M277dw wireless connection issues

[Networkguru]

I just purchased this printer 2 days ago and have been working ever since to get it to connect to my wireless network.  I didn't realize setting up a printer would take over 12 hours and I'm very frustrated.  I'm a 30 year veteran of the networking industry and have tried many different ways of connecting this printer to the wirless and all have resulted in the same thing.  The printer connects, authenticates and gets a DHCP address.  I am able to ping the printer over the wireless for about 2 minutes and then it stops.  The printer's network report shows everything is good, SSID, Auth method, etc.  The wireless indicator on the printer shows connected with good signal strength.  The wireless AP shows the printer active in the wireless connections until the pings stop and then the device goes to an inactive state, indicating the printer has stopped sending the wireless 'keepalives'.  At this point, I would say I have a faulty printer, but I've seen several posts on this forum with the same issue and no documented fix.  I find it very doubtful that HP has produced that many faulty printers.  Is there a solution to my issue?  Please advise......

[sabretooth04]

Set a static IP address in the printer outside the DHCP range of the router. Status?

[Networkguru]

Yep, that's one of the things I tried.  After setting the static IP, no response from the ping.  I reboot the printer and it will ping for a couple of minutes and then stop again.  Seems like it's some authentication issue on the wireless side.

[sabretooth04]

Make and model of router? Temporarily disable security and remove the password from your SSID. Now try to connect to your unsecured SSID. Status now? Can you stay connected?

[Networkguru]

My AP is a CenturyLink leased DSL modem/AP.  It identifies itself through the Gui as a Technicolor C2000T.  It's less than 2 years old, so fairly up to date, technically speaking.  As you probably already know, running a WiFi network with no security is not an option.  Retooling my WiFi network for no security would open it to the world as well as break every device I have connected to it now, including the desktop I'm working from right now.  While my home network isn't what I would call critical, it's also not a lab environment where I can break things just to test.  Just for grins, I set up a wireless network monitor and captured packets in promiscous mode and managed to get quite a bit of data, including exchanges between my AP and the Printer.  There's not really anything obvious in the captures, like authentication failures or a loss of frames from the printer, so I'm not sure what's going on.  I do have a cellular WiFi hotspot that I could reconfigure with no security and then reconfigure one of my laptops to connect to it and then load the HP printer software on it and see what happens, but that's going to take some time to accomplish. 

[Networkguru]

Well, this is not good, in my opinion.

I set up a test environment that included the printer, a 10 year old Sprint hotspot and laptop with wifi.

With WPA configured on the laptop, hotspot and printer, the printer was not even able to get a DHCP IP address.

I turned off all security/encryption on the hotspot and everything works great.  I was able to ping the printer for over 5 mintues with no issues.

I realized that my local wifi was not broadcasting the SSID, so I turned that on with WPA2 and reconfigured the printer for that.  No difference.  I could ping it for about 2 and a half minutes and it would stop.

I turned off all security on my local wifi and was broadcasting the SSID.  The printer associated and I was able to ping for about 2 and a half minutes and it stopped.

At this point I have absolutely no security on my WiFi and the printer still drops off after about 2 and a half minutes.  In my opinion, this is DEFINITELY an HP engineering issue and needs to be addressed ASAP.

[Networkguru]

K, one last attempt to make sure I'm not missing anything.  I restored factory defaults to my local AP, no security,broadcasting SSID, nothing that I can see that would keep anything from associating to my AP.  I reset the printer to factory defaults, waited for it to boot, followed the document that came with the printer and I'm still seeing the same issue.  It associates, pings for about 2 and a half minutes and stops.

[sabretooth04 · Accepted solution]

Time to return the printer for refund or exchange.

[Networkguru]

Well, not one for giving up, I tried HP support.  What a mess.  The first person I did a chat with deliberately closed the chat window while in control of my computer, basically hanging up on me.  I had to start all over and get another tech.  This tech really didn't know what he was doing.  He ended up rearranging the icons on my desktop and randomly poking around and finally said I needed to reboot my computer, wireless router and printer.  I told him that I would lose the chat, but he insisted it would recover after the reboot.  It did not.  Third times a charm, so I called HP support and sat on hold for over an hour before I finally got to talk to a rep.  The first words out of his mouth after I explained my issue, even before doing any troubleshooting was that I had a faulty wireless router.  I told him that the only wireless device that I could get the printer to connect to was an old 3G WiFi hotspot with no security enabled.  He advised me that the printer was unable to support connectivity to this type of device (even when it's the only one it would connect to?).  I logged him into my wireless router and he saw the term 'modem' and advised me that the HP would not support connectivity to a wireless modem.  It would only support a wireless router.  I advised him that my wireless 'modem' had router, firewall and wireless AP capabilities.  He advised that the HP printer did not support wireless AP because it was a switched environment.  He finally insisted the only way to fix my issue was for me to buy a new wireless router, even though the other 10 wireless devices that connect to it work fine and the HP is the only one that has issues.  I asked him to provide me with the make and model of a wireless router that the HP would connect to, he could not provide one.  He advised HP does not have wireless router expertise.

In case anyone from HP happens to be reading this, this is hands down the worst customer experience I have ever had.  I deal on a daily basis with major manufacturers like Cisco, Juniper, Alcatel and Brocade (to name a few) and have never received such horrible customer service.  I am truly dissappointed with the HP product that I purchased and will be returning it and will not be purchasing anything from HP again.

I like the answer posted by Dean, "time to return the printer", but the better answer would be 'save yourself the hassle and buy a Epson or Canon or somthing that is not an HP in the first place'

[Fire-Meteor]

The same things on me. They have nice product there bad service!:smileysad::smileysad::smileysad: