Connecting Printer to Network

[warner_patrick]

All,

I'm not a networking expert so apologies if this is a stupid question.

I am trying to connect an HP printer with networking features to my
home router. It keeps taking an IP address of 169.254.92.26 and says
it's subnet mask is 255.255.0.0 and default gateway 169.254.92.26.
When I try to ping that address I get nothing.

However it is supposed to get an address in the 192.168.1.65 type range
and the subnet mask on my router is 255.255.255.0 and the gateway
should be 192.168.1.254

I have used this printer before on a different router with no problem.
My problem now is that because the printer won't get a valid IP
address, and you can only change the settings in the printer's web
interface, I'm kind of blocked.

If there are any sites you can point me to that might help with this
issue that would be great.

cheers

 

[Ron Lowe]

All,

I'm not a networking expert so apologies if this is a stupid question.

I am trying to connect an HP printer with networking features to my
home router. It keeps taking an IP address of 169.254.92.26 and says
it's subnet mask is 255.255.0.0 and default gateway 169.254.92.26.
When I try to ping that address I get nothing.

However it is supposed to get an address in the 192.168.1.65 type range
and the subnet mask on my router is 255.255.255.0 and the gateway
should be 192.168.1.254

I have used this printer before on a different router with no problem.
My problem now is that because the printer won't get a valid IP
address, and you can only change the settings in the printer's web
interface, I'm kind of blocked.

If there are any sites you can point me to that might help with this
issue that would be great.

cheers

You can get an IP address into an HP JetDirect print server in a number of
different ways.
Print a test page to determine the actual IP address in use.

It *should* pick one up from your router's DHCP server.
Check that you are not blocking this on the router in some way, perhaps MAC
address filtering or exhausting the range of available IP addresses.

The easiest way to force an IP address into most Internal JetDirect cards is
via the front panel controls of the printer. Go into the Menu, IO Menu, EIO
device options and find your way from there.

Alternatively, temporarily set a PC to the same IP address range (
169.254.92.x / mask 255.255.0.0 ) where x is any number between 1 and 254,
but not 26. Once you have done this, the printer should be pingable on
169.254.92.26. Use the web page ( or telnet ) to set the IP settings you
want. Perhaps someone has hard-coded the 169.254 address, and all you need
to do is re-set it to 'Obtain automatically from DHCP. Either way, manually
entered or via DHCP, the printer will now change over to the 192.168.1.x
range, and you will loose communication from the 169.254 PC untill you
change the PC back to the 192.168.1 network.

 

[warner_patrick]

You can get an IP address into an HP JetDirect print server in a number of
different ways.
Print a test page to determine the actual IP address in use.

It *should* pick one up from your router's DHCP server.
Check that you are not blocking this on the router in some way, perhaps MAC
address filtering or exhausting the range of available IP addresses.

The easiest way to force an IP address into most Internal JetDirect cards is
via the front panel controls of the printer. Go into the Menu, IO Menu, EIO
device options and find your way from there.

Alternatively, temporarily set a PC to the same IP address range (
169.254.92.x / mask 255.255.0.0 ) where x is any number between 1 and 254,
but not 26. Once you have done this, the printer should be pingable on
169.254.92.26. Use the web page ( or telnet ) to set the IP settings you
want. Perhaps someone has hard-coded the 169.254 address, and all you need
to do is re-set it to 'Obtain automatically from DHCP. Either way, manually
entered or via DHCP, the printer will now change over to the 192.168.1.x
range, and you will loose communication from the 169.254 PC untill you
change the PC back to the 192.168.1 network.

Thanks for that - the trick with changing the IP address on the
computer temporarily worked, so I was now able to realign the printer.

(There is no menu option on the printer menu to change the IP address -
all you can do is reset to factory settings - it's an HP PSC 2510).

cheers