Cannot print when router is hooked up. Can Without. Why?

[EyeZayUh]

I am at my job and of course they have a network hooked up with all the printers. I brought in my wireless router so everyone here could be able to have a wireless connection with their laptops. Everyone connects fine but I notices that when I tried to print it gave an error.

"Windows cannot print due to a problem with the current printer setup.
Try on or more of the following:
*Check the printer by printing a test page from windows
*Make syre the printer is turned on and online
*reinstall printer driver*"

I uninstalled the printer driver and when i tried to reinstall it couldnt find the printer.

So I unhooked the router and connected the network cable direct to my pc and bypassed the router and then it finds the printer and prints fine. I hooked back up the router and the error is back. So its something with the router.

Are there and port forwarding options I need to setup in the router as to why it wont print or why it wont find the printer when the router is hooked up?

Thanks for the help in advance!

[muggy]

Hi,

I think it has something do with the printer being is a entirely different subnet and hence not mapped to your computer.

Usually corporate networks have static IPs assigned to printers and when you have the computer hooked via the network cable you are able to print because the IP your computer gets is in the same subnet as the printers'. When you include a router, the router assigns an IP to your computer via DHCP which could be hampering the communication.

I would recommended checking with your network admin about this

[EyeZayUh]

That sounds like that could be it. The router of course is giving a 192 to each PC. When I login to the router it is pulling an IP of 10.192.117.221. When I pull up the properties of the printer is if set with the IP of 10.192.112.91. So that def sounds like thats what it could be. How else could I hook it up to get wireless broadcasting around here then?

I emailed the IT guy here to see what he thinks. Guess I will have to wait to see what he has to say.

Argh!

[johnwill]

That's certain to be the issue. You have a NAT layer between the client and the printer. That's not going to work.

[EyeZayUh]

Originally Posted by johnwill

That's certain to be the issue. You have a NAT layer between the client and the printer. That's not going to work.

So if there any way to get wireless working here at work then? I dont care if the other laptops cant print, just dont want to have to disconnect the router to be able to print on my work pc.

[johnwill]

You can connect the wireless router as a AP by using the following configuration.

Connecting two (or more) SOHO broadband routers together.

Configure the IP address of the secondary router(s) to be in the same subnet as the primary router, but out of the range of the DHCP server in the primary router. For instance DHCP server addresses 192.168.0.2 through 192.168.0.100, I'd assign the secondary router 192.168.0.254 as it's IP address, 192.168.0.253 for another router, etc.

Note: Do this first, as you will have to reboot the computer to connect to the router again for the remaining changes.

Disable the DHCP server in the secondary router.

Setup the wireless section just the way you would if it was the primary router, channels, encryption, etc.

Connect from the primary router's LAN port to one of the LAN ports on the secondary router. If there is no uplink port and neither of the routers have auto-sensing ports, use a cross-over cable. Leave the WAN port unconnected!

This procedure bypasses the routing function (NAT layer) and configures the router as a switch (or wireless access point for wireless routers).