Anyone else been experiencing issues with printers that are setup with AirPrint just stop working and going “offline?” When I look at the issue I can still see the printer is connected via the dashboard and even subsequent pings from another device you can ping the printer. However it refuses to print, rebooting the printer does nothing. The only way I can get it function again is by rebooting all of the APs, not just the one it’s connected to. This problem repeats itself daily at this point. There are times as well when I still see the Printer connected via the dashboard and it will not respond to anything.
It’s a cannon printer that is not even a year old and functioned flawlessly before I swapped out the Ubiquiti APs. Also noticed that when I ping printer I will get !DUP packet errors as well.
I have had similar issues with my HP Envy printer that’s about two years old. When I cannot see it in AirPrint I just reboot the printer and it works again. Usually when AirPrint isn’t working I am not able to get to the management portal either. Mine is on a different VLAN so I thought it was my firewall but nothing is coming up in the logs. I have been working with the Alta team and I thought it got better after the 1.1d update but it only lasted about 24 hours so I ended up having to put it on the Admin VLAN until the issues are worked out.
when the printer was on separate VLAN, could it have been an mDNS/Bonjour forwarding issue on the SVI? I had a similar issue early on…but found that wasn’t forwarding mDNS/Bonjour over this 3850-48U that replaced an MS350-P.
Also, now…I lock my Printers down to specific APs, because I have had weird issues when they roam…it always messes with the bonjour service…but its ONLY Printers…once I locked them down to specific APs it stopped happening. I dont think the companies that are building these printers really invest a whole lot time in the internal NIC/WNIC drivers…but they do charge you for that…lol
I thought about the MDNS forwarding issue might be an issue so went down the path of putting them on the same vlan. Didn’t really do any diagnosing of the forwarding. I have noticed the printer likes to roam, I’ll try locking it to an AP and see what happens. It always seems to roam to the crappiest signal it can find lol.
I have been having this issue as well. On 1.1i my printer doesn’t like show as an available AirPrint printer. Rebooting the printer/access points helps short-term, but it’s weird because it shows about 50% of the time, and if you try it a few times over and over it eventually shows up. The printer, meanwhile, is connected to the network and I can access the web interface no problem. It was working normally before, but I don’t remember which firmware as I don’t print frequently - I just remember it always showing up and working.
My printer is located at 192.168.1.17. It is hardwired and on VLAN1. The iPhones that were trying to print using AirPrint were located on VLAN 1 as well so it wasn’t even traversing across to another VLAN.
What network type is set on your SSID password? Is it set to standard or something else? AirPrint is very picky and in my experimenting, Large, IOT, Internet, and Guest don’t play nice with it.
Have you used an mDNS/Bonjour browsing applications on one of the iPhones? If not, can you download one of the following apps and check what you see from the phone’s perspective?
There are a couple apps I usually recommend, either Discovery DNS-SD Browser, found HERE, or HE.NET, found HERE. Both are free. Discovery is literally just for inspecting mDNS/Bonjour (open, tap .local) whereas HE.NET is like a Swiss Army knife type networking app (go to the Menu, choose Bonjour Browser, tap .local).
Do you see anything containing ._ipp._tcp or ._print._udp? It’s more likely to contain ipp and be on tcp, if it were to show.
The printer is wired to the network, so the network types do not apply directly to it. They would however apply to the iPhones, or other client STAs connecting to the Alta AP, that are trying to print using the AirPrint service.
There are many devices since I have numerus Google Home Mini’s on the network (actually on a different VLAN).
I initially didn’t see the printer in the list, but I refreshed the list a few times and it came up, then went away. It seems like it comes and goes just like it does for the phone printer list.
The printer came up under many different labels: IPP, IPPS, PDL Data Stream, LPD/LPR, _privet:_tcp, Scanner, _uscan._tcp.
I didn’t see anything about it being wired? OP mentioned he sees the printer on the dashboard. This was similar to the IoT device issue i was having. They were connected and showing but my network settings were blocking their traffic.
Another thing to check that I had to do, was make sure all of my SSIDs had “Bypass Filter” checked. Airplay stopped working until I did this. AirPrint was unstable until I did this as well… might be worth a try?