Constant Traffic Between Wireless Printer and Computers - still not fixed?

[Kalpol]

I have just got an Officejet 8500 Wireless, connected wirelessly to a network of PCs running XP SP3 and Vista and a mix of Sygate Personal Firewall and Norton Internet Security 2009, and all functioning fine.

However, there is constant traffic between the printer and computers when no printer functions are being used at all. Logs show small packets of transfer constantly - more than every second or so, going up sequentially through UDP ports.

It is quite alarming to see, being conditioned to be suspicious of network traffic where there should be none, or is no need for any. And not only is it annoying having the taskbar icons constantly flashing for the network connection and the firewall, and the LEDs on the computers and router constantly flashing with activity, but it renders the use of these indicators and traffic log files useless as they are just full of printer activity and cannot be referred to to detect anything else. Worse, it does affect my PC performance - I use a lot of background processes for work with audio and MIDI, which has suddenly crawled to a halt after installing the printer. Smc.exe, the firewall component of Sygate/Norton, also jumps in CPU usage from idle peaks of 2/3% to 20% every couple of seconds.

Is there any way that this can be stopped while keeping functionality? I understand this has been a problem with HP software/printers for years now, with a fix promised but never delivered.

Thanks a lot.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

The constant traffic is the SW driver polling the printer for status.  The last time I looked, It amounts to about 500 bytes/sec per PC to and from the printer and so I would be surprised if you can notice the impact on your local network's bandwidth.

Are you seeing a higher background data rate than this?

I'll double check the background traffic rate with the 8500 to see if it's different than I remember.

Also, I think there is a way to cut down on the background traffic if you are willing to give up some status related features that the printer SW provides. 

[Kalpol]

Thanks for the help.

I see about ten times the background data rate you describe. (Wireshark 60 sec capture summary of printer traffic: Packets 2526, Avg packet size 100 bytes, Avg packets/sec 41, Bytes 245327, Avg bytes/sec 4188).

The bandwidth usage should indeed not impact other traffic, but this is not the point. First, 500MB of traffic per computer every day is not exactly peanuts! Second, if you read my post, you will see the chaos this causes is not due to reduced bandwidth. If you are confused about the performance hit - audio and MIDI work in programs such as Ableton, Cubase etc rely on not having  background processes taxing Windows to avoid stuttering crackling and dropouts. There is no network access or traffic involved. But having space to perform background processes is critical. I used to get perfect performance by just not accesing the internet, and then inbetween audio work I could load up my browser. Now after installing the HP printer, I must disable the wireless card and re-enable it every time. A chore to say the least.

Could you explain some more about the purpose of this traffic? What does polling exactly mean? Why does the driver have to poll the printer for status constantly anyway? Why are different ports used sequentially? Why can't traffic and polling only be initiated after each printer job?

Thanks.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

The reason our SW driver is so chatty is that it's trying mimic a USB connection where the SW can monitor the status of the printer with very little delay.  The types of status we're monitoring today are:

• What are the ink levels?
• Is the pen or ink cartridge door pen door open?
• Is the printer out of paper?
• Is the scan

The destination port to the printer is always the same for each service.  For example, the printer TCP stream is always to port 9100.  SNMP status is always to UDP port 161 though I'm not sure why the SW uses different source ports for SNMP communications.

It's been one of my pet peeves that at idle our driver is very chatty.  We are working to correct this.  In the meantime, there are a few things that you can do to cut down on the traffic:

1. The easiest thing is to turn off the radio in the printer when you need a quiet network or just turn off the printer.  Of course this is only convenient if the printer is near the computer you are working on
   
2. You can uninstall the HP printer SW and manually install the printer using the basic Microsoft service.  Doing so means you won't get our solution center (no great loss) and you'll have to scan using the printer's internal web interface (which you can access by browsing to the printer's IP address).

Here is how to manually install a HP networked printer on Vista:

1. Go to the Printers folder and select Add a printer.
2. Select Add a local printer
3. Select Create a new port and for the type of port select Standard TCP/IP Port.  Press Next.
4. For the Device type, select TCP/IP Device.
5. For Hostname or IP address, enter the printer's hostname.  You can find the printer's hostname by printing out the printer's network configuration page.  The hostname will start with HP followed by six hexidecimal characters.  Press Next.
6. From the list of manufacturer's, select Hewlett-Packard.  From the list of printer's select your model.  If you cannot find your printer, select Have Disk, browse to your setup CD and select the first file that starts with HP and ends with *.ini.  Now you should be able to select your printer from a new list.  Press Next.
7. At this point, the computer may begin installing the printer driver or ask you to keep the currently installed driver.  Keep the existing driver and press Next.
8. You'll be asked to name the print queue.  You can keep the suggested name or change it.  Press Next.
9. Next, you'll be asked whether you want to share the printer.  This choice is up to you.  Press Next.
10. Go ahead and Print a test page.

That should be it.  Mind you, this only gets you basic printing without the other HP SW (which many people want).  To scan, you'll have to use the printer's internal web page interface.

[Kalpol]

Hi,

Did you get a chance to check what the background traffic should be?

I still don't understand why the traffic needs to be constant, literally every second of every day, and not on-demand as and when required. It takes no time at all for the status of those things to be checked.

To prove the point and to find a workaround, I disabled the "HP Network Devices Support" service (from run>services.msc) in XP, and assigned a fixed IP for the printer at my router. All the traffic has stopped - it is at zero. So far, I can print fine. I can even scan fine, via TWAIN and by running hpiscnapp.exe - both of which function perfectly. This HP Scanning software is much better than the Webscan which as far as I can tell just loads the scan as a jpg in a window only. Two things don't work: fax from PC and scan buttons on the printer. Are there potential problems with this setup? You don't happen to know a way of making a shortcut which I can run to disable and re-enable the service, so I can keep this polling traffic off as standard and enable it when I need to use scan buttons or fax from PC?

I will try the manual install soon to see what functionality I exactly get that way.

Thanks a lot so far.

HP really ought to sort this out. It's clear the traffic isn't really necessary at all. Half a gigabyte per computer every day, that's quite something...

[Kalpol]

Oh, and switching the printer off isn't an option - it takes literally 5 minutes to switch back online again, and does some priming or cleaning or whatever probably drinking a lot of ink while it's at it. And switching the radio off and on isn't an option because of other users and because it takes about 12 cumbersome button presses with a high chance of knocking the wrong touchscreen option and setting something off despite trying to be precise as possible.

Thanks for the suggestions though.

[Kalpol]

Update: I found another problem. It takes over 2 minutes after HP solution center reports the printer is connected and available for the printer's Scan to Computer options to show the same PC as available. So, after booting up a computer you can only use the scan buttons two minutes later. Same for after restarting the HP network service in my workaround above.(I initally thought I found a problem with my workaround of stopping and restarting the service).

This is unacceptable for scan jobs, and needs to be fixed by HP ASAP.

All that traffic and the most useful thing it can do, it takes two minutes to do...great.

[SailingDreams]

I've got the same SNMP flooding problem too. Over 3 MBytes in 10 minutes. I'm connected via wire not wireless.

Any solution yet to reducing the SNMP traffic?

Printer: Photosmart C309a

Got it for the office but not sure I'll buy one for the home until this is fixed.

Message Edited by SailingDreams on 11-30-2009 03:09 PM

[JonPCole]

Any resolution to this yet?  I'm running a Mac Book Pro with a c309a printer and am flooded with SNMP traffic.

[larryludwick]

I have this problem too, and I find it ludicrous that the client software finds it necessary to check the 'status' of my printer three or four times a second, even when it's not in use.  This is just plain poor programming -- wasteful and inefficient.  I wish HP would take a little pride in creating a product that is efficient and economic in its use of bandwidth and resources.  It doesn't matter how much is available, there's no reason to waste any of it.