HP OfficeJet Pro 6978 appears to be offline to computers on the network

[sublimesound]

The printer is connected to my home network. The printer has been added to the computers and devices we wish to print from. But every time we try to print from our computers after any break in using the printer, the printer appears offline. It is not offline, according to its status on the printer home screen. A quick reboot of the printer or toggling the wireless option off and on will temporarily fix the issue. But only for a very short period. This is extremely frustrating. I have tried several different network settings, including giving the printer an assigned IP address on the network and connecting to it using IP protocol. Nothing seems to fix the issue.

Jay

[TEJ1602]

@sublimesound, Welcome to HP Support Community!

To be able to assist you better, I would like to know the following:

• Are the printer and PC connected to the same network?
• Is your router dual-band enabled i.e., both 2.4GHz and 5GHz?
• What is the distance between the router and the printer?
• Is there any antivirus software installed on your computer?
• Could you perform a ping test using the Mac Network Utility and let me know the results?

Use the printer IP address to perform a ping test, the printer IP can be located by selecting the wireless icon on the printer display.

The wireless status menu on your Mac should also give us quite a lot of information that would help us identify the issue. You can press and hold option-click the WiFi icon and then use shift-command-5 to take the screenshot. Press the space bar when the icon turns into a camera. Share the ping test results and the screenshot with us.

Also, check with your Internet service provider if your router is able to forward 'Bonjour packets'. 

Bonjour locates devices such as printers, other computers, and the services that those devices offer on a local network using multicast Domain Name System (mDNS) service records. The software comes built-in with Apple's macOS and iOS operating systems.

Keep me posted for further assistance.

Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution. Click the “Kudos/Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!

[sublimesound]

Answers to your questions:

Yes - printer and computer are connected to the same network

Yes - the router is dual-band enabled. The printer is connected to the 2.4GHz. My desktop and laptop computers are generally connected to the 5GHz band to take advantage of the extra bandwidth. But I am able to see the printer and print while connected to the 5GHz after toggling the printer on and off the network to reconnect it. I do realize that this might be part of the issue though. Even though I've lost my connection to the printer while on the 2GHz as well.

The printer is located very close to the router and has a clear sightline. I don't think that's the issue.

No antivirus software on my Macs. My wife's PC probably has some though (she is experiencing the same issues with losing connection to the printer)

Ping test results:

PING 192.168.0.5 (192.168.0.5): 56 data bytes

Request timeout for icmp_seq 0

Request timeout for icmp_seq 1

Request timeout for icmp_seq 2

Request timeout for icmp_seq 3

ping: sendto: No route to host

Request timeout for icmp_seq 4

ping: sendto: Host is down

Request timeout for icmp_seq 5

ping: sendto: Host is down

Request timeout for icmp_seq 6

ping: sendto: Host is down

Request timeout for icmp_seq 7

ping: sendto: Host is down

Request timeout for icmp_seq 8

--- 192.168.0.5 ping statistics ---

10 packets transmitted, 0 packets received, 100.0% packet loss

Wireless status of iMac:

Bonjour seems to be fully functional as the printer always shows up as a bonjour device when initially adding it.

Thanks for replying to my post!

Jay

[TEJ1602]

@sublimesound

Thanks for replying!

As per the ping test report, there is no communication between the devices. And, I see that the computer is connected to a 5GHz network whereas the printer can only connect to the 2.4 GHz network.

Change Router Channel: If you have an Apple router and you’re constantly getting interference with your WiFi, try rebooting it. Upon restart, the station will search for a new channel. Specifically, a different channel than the one your Bluetooth devices are using to communicate. If you don’t have an Apple router, you may need to instead go into your router settings and try changing the channel manually. Experiment with different channels to see which one works best.

Hope this helps! Keep me posted. 

Please click “Accept as Solution” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution. Click the “Kudos/Thumbs Up" on the bottom right to say “Thanks” for helping!