Extremely slow wireless printing with HP Photosmart Premium C309g-m

[thorantech2]

I hope this thread is still being monitored, as I have just installed one of these printers for a client and we're experiencing the same problem.  I have tried all the suggestions in this thread, except one.  I thought I would run this by you folks first.

The printer is installed wireless and being used by 3 computers: a wired desktop (WinXP SP3), a wireless laptop (Win7) and a wireless MacBook (OSX).  Installation of the printer drivers and detection of the printer went smoothly on all 3 computers.  As reported by others, even single-page print jobs print extremely slowly - from all 3 computers -  and while the job is in progress the computer printing the job will sometimes display a message indicating the printer failed to print, even though it eventually does finish printing.

The router is a DLink DIR 655, with the latest firmware.  Wireless security is WPA Personal, (TKIP or AES).  The printer is set to authenticate via WPA as well.  The printer is set to use a static IP address, which is also reserved for the printer in the router.

The router's wireless mode is set to Mixed (n/g/b) and the Channel Width is set to 20MHz.

In addition to the Manual IP, the printer is set to Manual Default Gateway (blank) and Manual DNS (blank).

The router's Auto-Channel Select is disabled and the wireless channel is set to 1.

The printer's network summary report follows.  The client's router is the first one listed:

SSID                Ch    RSS

622Val                 1    -29

linksys                 8    -87

motorola718    11    -89

As I indicated at the beginning of this post, I think the only suggestion in this thread that I haven't tried yet is the #4 suggestion to the Linksys user:  select In an infrastructure network use 802.11b/g behavior.  Press Apply.

Should I try this?  Any other suggestions?  The client likes the printer but is just about ready to look elsewhere for one if I can't solve this for them soon.  Any help would be appreciated.  Thanks!

[PrintDoc]

Is the static/reserved IP address inside or outside the DHCP range?  Typically, reserving within DHCP and setting static outside DHCP works best.

Perhaps try to go back and do one of the two above in the router, then simple put the printer back to Automatic IP.

Everything else looks good.  You could try another channel.  There could be other things interfering with the wireless (microwave oven, cordless phone, etc).  Try 11.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

Two checks:

1) Make sure the D-Link DIR-655 has the latest FW.  I use the DIR-655 in my lab and consider it a solid performer.

2) Remove the HP customer participation program from the computers (if they were accidentally installed).

Other comments:

• While you are using the best Wi-Fi channel, as an experiment you might try channel 11.
• Turn off the computers, printers and the D-Link.  Turn on the D-Link first, wait 30 seconds for it to start-up completely then turn on the printer next.  Wait 30 seconds then turn on the computers.  This will clear-up an inadvertent IP conflicts on the local network.
• Still having trouble with slow printing?  Turn off the computers and try printing from just one computer.  I'd like to try and see if the problem is associated with just one machine.
• Finally, go ahead and select  In an infrastructure network use 802.11b/g behavior from the printer's internal web page.

[thorantech2]

Thank you for the quick responses.

PrintDoc:

> Is the static/reserved IP address inside or outside the DHCP range?  Typically, reserving within DHCP and setting static outside DHCP works best.

Originally I had the printer IP set to Auto (I believe this was the default) and reserved in the router, within the DHCP range.  Then after reading suggestions here I set the printer IP to Manual (same address), still keeping it reserved within the DHCP range in the router.  I will try the variations again.

WiFiGuy:

>1) Make sure the D-Link DIR-655 has the latest FW.  I use the DIR-655 in my lab and consider it a solid performer.

I agree, it's a nice router.  I did install the latest firmware.  We were actually originally having two problems: the printer kept dropping connection (there was another thread about this on this forum) and the slow printing.  When I updated the router firmware, the connectivity issue appeared resolved.

> 2) Remove the HP customer participation program from the computers (if they were accidentally installed).

I'm pretty sure I didn't install the CPP, just as standard practice, but will definitely double-check.

> Turn off the computers, printers and the D-Link.  Turn on the D-Link first, wait 30 seconds for it to start-up completely then turn on the printer next.  Wait 30 seconds then turn on the computers.  This will clear-up an inadvertent IP conflicts on the local network.

This is pretty much the way I have been doing it, except I've been allowing 60 seconds before  re-powering the router.  I may not have been waiting 30 seconds to re-power the PCs.  I will try this.

I have arranged to see the client this morning and will try your other suggestions as well.  Thanks!

[thorantech2]

The suggestion to set the printer to use wireless b/g behavior in infrastructure mode appears to have solved the problem in my client's case. So far we have not observed the slow printing since changing this setting. Thank you very much.

[aziegaus]

Hello, this thread looks current.  I have the same printer and the same incredibly slow printing problem.  But I can't follow the thread on what needs to be done.  May I ask for detailed instructions?  Here is my setup:  Three Apple computers and one Win 7 using the printer through a Time Capsule located 8 feet from the computer.  It started off working ok and then ran into this.  Any help would be most appreciated.

[PrintDoc]

aziegaus, I assume the printer is connected wirelessly to your Time Capsule?  Is the Time Capsule firmware current (7.4.2)?

What Radio mode is your TC set to?   Have you tried rebooting the printer and Time Capsule in the sequence Wi-Fi-Guy suggests?

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

Browse to the printer's internal web page by opening it's IP address.  You can do this by browsing to the printer's IP address or since you have a Mac, you can use Bonjour to find the printer's web page (from Safari, select Bookmarks, select Show All Book Marks, select Bonjour then double click on the printer in the main Safari window).

Alternatively, you can get the printer's IP address by printing the Network Configuration Page (from the printer, select Setup, then Network, then View Network Settings, then Print Network Configuration Page).

Next, from the printer's web page, select Networking, then Wireless (802.11) then Advanced.  Scroll to the bottom of the page and select  In an infrastructure network use 802.11b/g behavior.  Press Apply.

BTW -- what kind of wireless router do you have?

[Henkali]

Hi,

thanks for Wi-Fi-Guy, this seemed to help me as well. My setup is Macbook with Snow Leopard connected to Airport Express (n-support) which is connected to DSL. I also have couple of Lenovos with Windows XP,  but I never tried to print anything larger than couple of lines of text with one of them.

I'd like to know why that helped. Is there any side effects? Why does printer even need DNS server? What is the point, it's not going to contact anywhere, right? What was wrong with original setup (DHCP, Airport express as gateway, my ISP's DNS servers). I also disabled UPnP as Airport Express doesn't support it, or that is how I googled it to be.

Even though it seems to work now (and all my respects to Wi-Fi-Guy), please answer if you can.

[Wi-Fi-Guy]

Some of our "web connected" printers need the address of the Domain Name System name server (DNS)  to find the IP address of internet sites.

The C309g-m uses the DNS name server to access the Snapfish servers.  The work around I presented here will unfortunately disable the Snapfish feature of your printer.

What was wrong with the original setup was that an anomaly in the printer's TCP/IP stack would cause some DSL connected routers to loss their ability to relay DNS requests to the name server.  The result was either very slow local LAN performance or an inability to contact web sites.

Other than the loss of the Snapfish feature, there are no downsides to this work around.

The other modification that set the secret switch to run the printer in 802.11b/g mode (selecting the  In an infrastructure network use 802.11b/g behavior from the printer's internal web page) is a safety I put in to compensate for less than perfect interpretation of the new 802.11n standard by some designers of wireless-routers.  Even though our printers are Wi-Fi certified and even though we work very hard to test for interoperability with a wide selection of 802.11n routers, we occasionally are forced to set the printer into 802.11b/g mode to interoperate with 2nd class wireless-routers.

From a network performance impact, setting the printer into 802.11b/g mode has a very slight impact on network throughput and is really not measurable.