Extremely slow wireless printing with HP Photosmart Premium C309g-m

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

What kind of wireless-router are you using and who is your ISP?

What kind of security SW are you running on your PC.

I have two experiments for you to try for me:

1) Do you have an Ethernet cable that you can use to temporarity connect the printer to your wireless-router?  If you can, try this connection and see if access to the printer's internal web page improves.

2) Disconnect your wireless-router from the internet, turn off the power to the router, wait 30 seconds then restore power.  Leave the internet disconnected and check to see if browsing to the printer's internal web page is faster.

[jnapier99]

Router - Dlink Wireless N DIR-655

ISP - Comcast

Security SW - Windows One Care

I have so far tried #1 below and it did improve performance - access was nearly instantaneous running wired.

For #2 I have to attempt that later.

Thanks

update: after switching to wired connection then back to wireless, response probelm seems resolved.  Ip was renewed, wbe page access fine, printing now very quick.  Any idea what the problem may have been given this?  In case it happens again I'd liek to knwo what might have been going on.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

OK -- I know the DIR-655.  It's a good router and use these in my lab with good results.  By plugging the Ethernet cable into the printer you caused the Wi-Fi connection between the printer and the router to disconnect.  Then unplugging the Ethernet cable caused a reconnection.  I think this caused the router to reset the connection state to the printer and recovered your performance.

Believe it or not, one thing we've done to improve the reliability of the router is to connect the DIR-655 to a light timer that power cycles the router once a day  at 3 am.  This has resolved a number of router induced soft-failures with our wireless-connections.

As for your particular situation, we can look at several items.

Print out the printer's Network Configuraton Page.  From the front panel:

• Press the right arrow and select Setup.
• Press Network
• Press View Network Settings
• Press Print Network Configuration Page.

The second page will show a wireless-survey.  Tell me the names of the networks detected, their channel number and their signal strength (RSSI).  Also tell me which network is yours.

Now, let's go to the router.   Log in to the router's web page.  If you are in North America, you should be running router FW version 1.32NA.  If you're not running the latest, consider updating the router's FW.

Next, from the router's web page, select WIRELESS SETTINGS then Manual Wireless Network Setup.  Verify the following:

• The 802.11 Mode should be set to Mixed 802.11n, 802.11g and 802.11b.
• Set the Channel Width to 20 MHz.
• Uncheck the Enable Auto Channel Scan and select a channel that is at least 5 channels away from your strongest neighbor as listed in the Network Configuration Page that we printed out earlier.

[jnapier99]

Ok, first things first - I am running an older fw version (1.21) so I will consider upgrading.  The print speed is still fine today though so no issues with any connectivity.

As for the settings in the router and the networks detected.  I was already running channel 11, which still seems to be the best option and all other settings are as referenced.  Networks are:

Wireless channel 11 -30 (mine)

camelot channel 1 -70

6BHDT channel 1 -79

Atchison channel 2 -80

NETGEAR channel 6 -81

VanAlstyne channel 6 -83

Elapide channel 11 -83

maverick channel 6 -84

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

Agree -- channel 11 is your best choice for your environment.

[jnapier99]

Well, I am back to having the same problems again - very frustrating.  No settings have changed, I have not added any hw/sw, etc.  I just suddenly have print jobs failing, aborting and/or taking several minutes to complete.  All jobs spool and start but none are finishing.  I get error messages that the "document failed to print" throughout the printing (even in cases where the page eventually finishes successfully).  I don't know what's going on or how to resolve it.  Perhaps resetting the router?

Also, on an unrelated issue.  I have this printer setup with two computers.  Even though it is online on my network and visible, neither PC could "find" the printer during the install and in both cases I had to hook the printer up via a USB cable in order to complete the setup.  That was ok for these two but not be an option the next time.  Any ideas?

edit: After the first of 4 queued pages (all small, 76kb was the largest) failed to print  - printing about 10% and then ejecting the page - and error messages throughout the printing, the printer suddenly came to life and finished the print job as expected.  I then reprinted the first page, which had failed and it printed fine.

Thanks

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

The next time the issue occurs, please reboot the router and see if that corrects the issue.

BTW -- I have one of my wireless-routers on a light timer that powers down the device for 15 minutes every morning at 3 am.  This seems to correct many of the instabilities that I have with one brand of wireless-router that I have.

[wbc58]

I'm having the same problem with a linksys N router and the same printer (just got it). I thought I had fixed things using your suggestion about blamking out the DNS and default gateway entries, but then the problem returned. Rebooting the router has no effect. I have the latest firmware for the router installed.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

There are a couple of things to check with the router's configuration and on your computer:

0) What model Linksys 802.11n wireless-router do you have?  Is it running the latest FW?

1) Make sure the 2.4 GHz radio is running in mixed mode (802.11b + 802.11g + 802.11n) and that the channel bandwidth is set for 20 MHz.

Q -- what type of encryption are you running?

2) Print the Network Configuration Page from the C309g (from the front panel, select Setup, Network, View Network Settings and then Print Network Configuration Page.  The second page had a wireless survey of all detected wireless networks in the area.

Tell the names (SSID), channel, signal strength (RSSI) and which network is yours.  It's best if your network is at least 5 channels away from your strongest neighbor.  If this isn't the case, change your wireless-router's channel (you may have to disable automatic channel feature on the Linksys if it's enabled).

3) Uninstall the HP Customer Participation program from your computer (if you installed it).

4) Open the printer's internal web page by browsing to its IP address.  After the page opens, append ?support=on to the current URL in your browser.  This will enable a special mode on the printer.  Now select Networking, Wireless (802.11), then Advanced.  Scroll to the bottom of page and select In an infrastructure network use 802.11b/g behavior.  Press Apply.

[wbc58]

> What model Linksys 802.11n wireless-router do you have?  Is it running the latest FW?

WRT310N Yes, 1.0.07

> Make sure the 2.4 GHz radio is running in mixed mode (802.11b + 802.11g + 802.11n) and that the channel bandwidth is set for 20 MHz.

Done.

> what type of encryption are you running?

WPA2 Personal, TKIP or AES

No problems with channels in our area 🙂 Only one other network around.

> select In an infrastructure network use 802.11b/g behavior.  Press Apply.

Did this, and it seems to have done the trick (so far). Installed the printer on my laptop (was using my desktop) and everything seems to be working at proper speed. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't revert after an hour or so.

Thanks for the help.