Trying to fix wireless printing to an HP LaserJet 1320nw...

[jazzbaritone]

Howdy, y'all; we have several Toshiba laptop users (WinXPProSP2; all
patches including KB917021) who wanna print wirelessly via an ad-hoc
connection. After XP's ZCN establishes the connection, only 1 of 3
laptops can print to the lj1320nw.

The 2 non-printing laptops can't ping the printer, whose IP address is
169.254.172.74, with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. Also tried to ping
among the laptops and noticed that the laptop that works does cause
the "packets received" counter to increase on the non-printing
laptops, even though the non-printing laptops don't seem to respond.
The printer has a network name ("dhcppc1"), which does resolve
correctly to its IP address on the non-printing laptops.

I tried the other TCP debugging tools without discovering any other
issues. All the laptops can successfully connect to an access point
for Web surfing, so the adapters work. All laptops have latest BIOSs
and drivers installed. XP firewall is disabled, but running Norton
Anti-virus 2007.

We're stumped. Any ideas? As always, appreciate your responses.

APJ in NorCal, USA.

 

[Lem]

Howdy, y'all; we have several Toshiba laptop users (WinXPProSP2; all
patches including KB917021) who wanna print wirelessly via an ad-hoc
connection. After XP's ZCN establishes the connection, only 1 of 3
laptops can print to the lj1320nw.

The 2 non-printing laptops can't ping the printer, whose IP address is
169.254.172.74, with a subnet mask of 255.255.0.0. Also tried to ping
among the laptops and noticed that the laptop that works does cause
the "packets received" counter to increase on the non-printing
laptops, even though the non-printing laptops don't seem to respond.
The printer has a network name ("dhcppc1"), which does resolve
correctly to its IP address on the non-printing laptops.

I tried the other TCP debugging tools without discovering any other
issues. All the laptops can successfully connect to an access point
for Web surfing, so the adapters work. All laptops have latest BIOSs
and drivers installed. XP firewall is disabled, but running Norton
Anti-virus 2007.

We're stumped. Any ideas? As always, appreciate your responses.

APJ in NorCal, USA.

NAV has a feature that's called Internet Worm Protection, which is, in
fact, a firewall. Either disable it or configure it to allow traffic
among the IP addresses in use.

 

[jazzbaritone]

NAV has a feature that's called Internet Worm Protection, which is, in
fact, a firewall. Either disable it or configure it to allow traffic
among the IP addresses in use.

Thanks for your reply, Lem. Tried turning off both "Auto-Protect" and
"Internet Worm Protection," but no improvement, unfortunately. The
laptop from which wireless printing works has NAV 2007 enabled with
defaults, and it works as expected.

Any other debugging procedures that I can use to repair this issue?

APJ in NorCal, USA.

P.S. Enjoyed the "Apollo Guidance Computer" Wikipedia reference.

 

[Guest]

Hi Jazz

The IP Address you supplied sounds like an Auto IP Address. That is probably
why they're not able to print. I would do the following:

Find the MAC (Hardware address) of the print server and then add a
reservation so that it uses an IP Address on the same subnet as your laptops.

Then add the printer using the software that is supplied, stating that it is
a wireless printer.

If the above fails, then it would appear that you have a fault on the
printer wireless network card. Hopefully the printer is still under warranty!"

 

[jazzbaritone]

Hi Jazz

The IP Address you supplied sounds like an Auto IP Address. That is probably
why they're not able to print. I would do the following:

Find the MAC (Hardware address) of the print server and then add a
reservation so that it uses an IP Address on the same subnet as your laptops.

Then add the printer using the software that is supplied, stating that it is
a wireless printer.

If the above fails, then it would appear that you have a fault on the
printer wireless network card. Hopefully the printer is still under warranty!"

Thanks for your reply, SSF; I still haven't solved the problem.

Wireless printing via the ad-hoc network DOES work, but via only 1 of
the Toshiba laptops that I'm trying to configure. So I conclude that
the printer is fine.

The printer advertises an SSID of "hpsetup," and that's the SSID that
the laptops connect to. The connection is open without encryption.

The laptops do get IP addresses from XP's Automatic Private IP
Addressing logic, and as I understand it, that's how ad-hoc
connections are supposed to work. The problem is that only 1 of the
laptops can correctly ping the printer.

I've tried to test the ad-hoc connection between the laptops by
pinging between them. Laptop A, which can correctly ping the printer,
will ping laptop B, and I can see that laptop B is responding to the
ping by receiving a packet and then sending one (visible in the
wireless adapter's Status counters window). However, laptop A doesn't
see laptop B's ping response. In pinging laptop A from laptop B, I can
see that laptop B is xmitting the ping frame in the Status window, but
A doesn't seem to respond to B, and a ping response frame doesn't come
back to B.

However, laptop A correctly pings the printer. Strange.

XP firewalls are off, as is the Internet worm filter in NAV 2007. No
IPsec policies have been defined for either laptop.

Not sure what to do next. Any ideas?

TIA from APJ in NorCal, USA.

 

[smlunatick]

Thanks for your reply, SSF; I still haven't solved the problem.

Wireless printing via the ad-hoc network DOES work, but via only 1 of
the Toshiba laptops that I'm trying to configure. So I conclude that
the printer is fine.

The printer advertises an SSID of "hpsetup," and that's the SSID that
the laptops connect to. The connection is open without encryption.

The laptops do get IP addresses from XP's Automatic Private IP
Addressing logic, and as I understand it, that's how ad-hoc
connections are supposed to work. The problem is that only 1 of the
laptops can correctly ping the printer.

I've tried to test the ad-hoc connection between the laptops by
pinging between them. Laptop A, which can correctly ping the printer,
will ping laptop B, and I can see that laptop B is responding to the
ping by receiving a packet and then sending one (visible in the
wireless adapter's Status counters window). However, laptop A doesn't
see laptop B's ping response. In pinging laptop A from laptop B, I can
see that laptop B is xmitting the ping frame in the Status window, but
A doesn't seem to respond to B, and a ping response frame doesn't come
back to B.

However, laptop A correctly pings the printer. Strange.

XP firewalls are off, as is the Internet worm filter in NAV 2007. No
IPsec policies have been defined for either laptop.

Not sure what to do next. Any ideas?

TIA from APJ in NorCal, USA.

You problem seems to stem from the "ad hoc" network problem. Ad Hoc
wireless network seems to be a "first come - one only server"
network. That is to say the first "client" to connect the the "ad-
hoc" receiver will only be the active connection until the "lease"
time is up.

A better solution is to set up a wireless access point / wireless
router onto your network. "Infrastructure" type wireless networks do
offer more connections and an easier configurartion control.