Connecting a network printer

[Russell]

Sorry, but I'm going to ask a very dumb question(s) here.

About 4 years ago I bought an OKI 531N network connected printer that came with a TP-Link TL-WR710N WiFi Pocket Router/AP/TV Adapter/Repeater to turn it into a wireless printer.  This worked fine for quite a long time but then the printer would go off-line for long periods.

To get round this I connected the home PC and printer via a 8 port switch and got printing back.  Now, as mentioned elsewhere, I have installed a new wifi router in the loft and so I thought I would try to get the printer connected wirelessly again.

I reset the WiFi Pocket Router/AP/TV Adapter/Repeater thing and configured it into client mode and got it to recognise the new wifi network.  But the next step is confusing me.  How do I get the printer onto the thing's LAN and get the IP addessesses to match up?  Then how do I get the computers on the network to see the printer?

There's an IP address on the LAN page of the thing (192.168.1.105 [greyed out]) but a different one on the front panel of the printer (169.254.40.156).  Do I make the printer IP to be in the same range as the thing?  Say 192.168.1.111?

Thanks and sorry.

[pcolbeck]

169.254.40.156 is a self assigned IP address. It means your printer couldn't find the network or couldn't get a assigned an address via DHCP.

You should be able to pug the Ethernet connection of your printer into the Ethernet connection of the Pocket Router thing and then in the menu of the printer somewhere there should be an option to set IP address to DHCP. That should then let the printer get an IP address on the network from your DHCP server (your broadband router unless you are running a more complex home network).

If that works you then know its on the correct network and you have two options.

1) On the broadband router assign the printer a static DHCP address so it gets the same one every time (you should be able to see the printers MAC address or name against the IP DHCP gave it so you can statically assign it)  and then turn the printer on and off - it should now get its new static address.

2) Assign the printer a static address outside the DHCP address range of your broadband router using the printers menu,

Either way once you have an address assigned to your printer on the correct network and its not going to change your PCs/MACs or whatever should be able to discover it and print to it.

[Russell]

Thank PC

I went through the printer's set up and found that it was set to 'IP Address set - auto' which I assume is the same as DHCP.

It was the switch off and on again thing that I forgot about.

It now has an IP address of 192.168.1.107.  I removed the original printer from the list and asked it to add a new printer which it did and it prints.  So all is well at the moment.

Not sure how to go into the Virgin modem to do the static assignment but that'll be for another day.

Thanks