Wireless printer

[JKelly]

Hi:

Just purchased a Canon wirless printer. When I turn it on, it takes about 15-20 minutes to connect although the signal strength is about 78-80%. Anyone know what the problem is? Checked all settings, and there is nothing left to check. Called Spectrum, and they were a little stumped. (Canon says printer is fine) Should I swap out the modem? 

Thanx

JJK

[dstoffa]

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@JKelly wrote:

Hi:

Just purchased a Canon wirless printer. When I turn it on, it takes about 15-20 minutes to connect although the signal strength is about 78-80%. Anyone know what the problem is? Checked all settings, and there is nothing left to check. Called Spectrum, and they were a little stumped. (Canon says printer is fine) Should I swap out the modem? 

Thanx

JJK

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Hard-wire the printer to your LAN and assign it a static IP address on your LAN.

If your router is showing that it served an IP address to your printer, the lease time may be too short, and/or the device is going to sleep and timing out.

[karlbeckman]

As dstoffa already said, first get the printer working over an ethernet cable plugged into the back of your router.

Start by digging up the user manuals for both your router and printer.  Then, AFTER you have successfully printed a few pages over the wire:

1)  Adjust the router's DHCP settings to start the LAN addresses at  192.168.1.100  and continue up to  192.168.1.200  .  Do NOT use last octets 1 through 10 for DHCP - Apple devices don't like them! 

2)  Assign the DHCP renew time as 24 hours or longer.  Your router may require that time be entered as minutes  [ 1440 ] or even in seconds { 86400 }.  I like to use 1500 or 99999 for those values.  Read your user manual to find the specific details.   You can use numbers greater than the exact times I suggest. 

3)  Now it's time to set the printer IP address according to the user manual.  Assign your printer the static IP address  192.168.1.99  .  Do you have any other devices running over WiFi, such as another printer, video camera, or a smart thermostat?  If so, assign each one its own IP address suffix between 11 and 98.  Don't worry about your smartphones, they will find their own WiFi address after you tell them which home network name to use. 

[RAIST5150]

IDK how practical it will be on your particular network (I use my own router), but can bind the IP address in DHCP. As a general rule I do this for all "static" devices... even our phones are bound (that may be overkill, but it simplifies some things when certain addresses never change).

That alone may/may not improve link negotiations... but it does afford you the option to then configure those devices with static network configuration, since DHCP now has that address reserved (won't give it to another device and create a conflict). That may speed up the initial connection, as it will no longer need to synch up with DHCP.

[karlbeckman]

Yes, the idea of binding the MAC ID to a static IP will help, once the user understands static vs dynamic IP addressing.  But in most homes, the printer seldom if ever needs to change to a different router or different IP address.  As you point out, you generally need to own the router, rather than renting an all-in-one WiFi gateway from Spectrum or any other internet provider.

[JKelly]

I replaced this Canon printer with a three year old Canon wireless printer. Never had a problem with that. Same modem. Bottom line. Should I replace the modem?