Mac Loses Connection to Printer

[tdeprenda1]

I have a wifi connected M252. My mac loses connection to the printer frequently. I am using a Quantum Gateway Router from Verizon FiOS that is located in the same area as the printer and Mac. I also have a wifi extender that is located on the 2nd floor of the house. They both use the same SSID as per the instructions from Verizon. Both the 2.5 Ghz and 5.0 Ghz show as one network to simply the network for family members. Again, this is what Verizon instructions say to do. When I print, the Mac can't find the printer and I usually have to delete and add the printer in the Mac's system preferences. The printer is connected using the Bonjour setup for the Mac. By that, I mean, you go into the system prefs, add the printer, which usually pops up in the view window. One thing I noticed is that when it can't find the printer, I restart the FiOS extender on the 2nd floor and it then becomes available to print. So I'm guessing it becomes confused by the same SSID and acts as if it on a different network. Any suggestions on how to fix? Thanks!

[John_Getzke]

The network may be changing the IP address as the printer goes in and out of sleep mode.  That or it could just be a simple sleep mode issue and this model does not have a wake on LAN feature to autoamtically wake up on its own.  My little P1102 lacks a wake on LAN feature too and I have to hit the power button to start it up before I want to print each time.

Try printing off a configuration page of the printer to confirm the IP address before and after the problem occurs. See if the IP address changes from one reboot to another.  If so then you can resolve part of the problem by moving the printer to a Static IP address on your network.  Static IPs do not change, they should be apart of teh same subnet as teh main network but outside of teh range of the automatic/DHCP IP addresses so that they do not conflict with other devices.

I checked the specs for the M252 but I do not see any referance of any kind of automatic wake on network feature for this model: http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-color-laserjet-pro-m252dw

Next time try pressing the power button on the printer and giving it a moment before you want to print.  A manual wakeup may be all you need to do in this scenario.

[tdeprenda1]

Thanks for the info... I'll try hitting the power button to wake to see if that helps. If I remember correctly when there is no issue, which is few and far between, the printer does wake when I send to print. Regarding the IP address, I did notice that it retains the same IP.

[John_Getzke]

> If I remember correctly when there is no issue, which is few and far between, the printer does wake when I send to print

It could be that the auto-on feature was not mentioned in the specs.  Perhaps that implies its included on this model and HP only lists it when its not like on the M102w: http://store.hp.com/us/en/pdp/hp-laserjet-pro-m102w-printer (under power consumtion).

> Regarding the IP address, I did notice that it retains the same IP.

Good to know.  As long as the IP is the same and the printer is network accessible then your OS should be able to talk to it. 

When you get around to testing your setup again try sending a PING request to the IP address of the printer when its not responding.  That will give us another clue to suggest if the OS or printing software is the problem as opposed to somethign on the network or printer.

Its still possible that your network is shutting down the IP that the printer is using due to inactivity.  Some home routers do this to keep thier DHCP addresses free and freshly available if they are needed.  A migration to a static IP address would rule out a problem with this kind of a feature.

[tdeprenda1]

Thinking the network and SSIDs are the issue and not the printer... I also have an EPSON all-in-one that is wireless and the same thing happens. If I had to furthur guess, it might be one of two things... the extender because once I restart the extender, the printer responds to the Mac or it has something to do with the printer only accessing the 2.4 network and the computers are on the 5.0 network. When I had the SSIDs separate, the printers were on the 2.4 and the Mac was on the 5.0. I constantly had to switch to the 2.4 to print.

[John_Getzke]

> They both use the same SSID as per the instructions from Verizon. Both the 2.5 Ghz and 5.0 Ghz show as one network to simply the network for family members. Again, this is what Verizon instructions say to do.

Ah I see.  By reading this in your original post I assumed you meant that both the networks were setup to communicate with eachother as one large network.  With your most recent post you are suggesting you have two seperate networks but just happen to use the same SSID for them both.  If so then a quick fix might be to simply rename one of the networks to make it unique from the other.  Then your devices wont have a hard time knowing which network to connect to.  For example renaming your 5GHz network to end with "-5G".

Otherwise you are going to have to go through a process that linksys calls "cascading" two routers together:

https://www.linksys.com/ca/support-article?articleNum=132275

According to this article you appear to be on a LAN to WAN setup.  What you are expecting are the benefits of one large network such as what is described by LAN to LAN.  Using the LAN to LAN steps converts whatever you deem to be the 2ndary router as an Access Point for the primary router and nothing more.  Then everything will be controlled by and visible the primary home router.

Give these ideas a shot and let us know if you can discover anything else.