Here's a puzzler.
I have a client who purchased a problematic Epson ET-3600 printer. She has set
it up using WiFi. The printer runs fine for a short while, then the Mac
reports it as no longer available.
Because this client has a MikroTik wireless access point, I was able to perform
some detailed diagnostics Saturday. The AP reported that the printer had
maintained a continuous wireless connection for three days and 20 hours, so it
wasn't disconnecting from the network. However, the printer would not respond
to pings from the AP, and it would not respond to a request to browse to the
configuration pages at its IP address. During this period, the client's Mac was
reporting that the printer was unavailable.
Note that I could ping every other device on the AP successfully, except this
printer. Essentially, the phone at the other end was still off hook, but the
other party had left the building.
I asked her to fiddle with the touch screen a bit to see if it was perhaps in
some sort of snooze mode and she could wake it up. No soap.
I asked her to press the power button to turn it off. I saw the wireless
registration disappear appropriately. Then I asked her to turn it back on.
After a suitable boot delay, the wireless registration returned, and the
printer was awarded the same IP address. At that point, the printer responded
to pings, and responded properly to siccing a browser at its IP address.
Shortly, the printer began printing a few jobs that had been queued up in the
client's Mac.
I browsed pretty much the entire suite of configuration pages, and found
nothing bizarre or unexpected. Yet later on that day, the printer went deaf,
dumb, and blind again.
I told the client her printer was simply broken, and that the problem didn't
seem to be network-related (either hers or the printer's). So she went back to
the store and traded it in for another unit of the same type and model.
The new printer behaves exactly the same way the first one did.
This client has run WiFi printers before on this exact network without this
problem.
The Best Buy tech basically threw up his hands and gibbered. The Epson tech
suggested that a firewall in her computer was to blame. But her firewall is
default inactive, the tests I performed were injected directly into her LAN,
didn't involve her computer at all, and didn't even involve traffic through a
router (just a dumb bridged wireless/ethernet switch). I can't see any reason
for it… but I also can't see two units in a row failing the same way, without
there being a corresponding fudgestorm of complaints on the net from everyone
else who has tried running one. And I'm not seeing that (at least not in the
searches I've tried).
Does anybody have any provocative ideas?
--
Macs R We -- Personal Macintosh Service and Support
in the Wickenburg and far Northwest Valley Areas.
http://macsrwe.com
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