I have some trouble setting up a printer on my network.

My network is divided so that all wired connections are in one subnet, while all wireless devices are in another. My printer is Canon MP640 and is connected via wireless. When I use the network printer scanner utility from Canon, it will only scan my wired subnet, and is thus unable to see the printer. I can ping the printer, so there is no problem with subnet segregation.

On my router, I have Debian and iptables. My initial thought was that I could somehow set iptables to just forward all packets to an address to my printer. This address, of course, wouldn't exist "physically". But I have no idea whether or not this is the right approach.

A suggestion I received from a colleague was to set up forwarding of broadcast packets. However, I am unsure whether this will have an impact on the wired subnet.

If any of you could conjure a magical iptables rule for this or have suggestions other than plugging the printer into the wired net, I'd highly appreciate it.

I need an answer to this question aswell.

Do you have to use the scanner utility? In other words, isn't there
an option to put in a known IP address or hostname? Most printer
setup software allow you to do this.

First thing I did was to write Canon an e-mail asking about such a feature. They told me to contact my network administrator and get help "connecting" the subnets. So I contacted myself and I have no idea how to "connect" two subnets. If such a thing was even remotely possible.

Some wireless cards cannot be put into promiscuous mode which is required to listen on packets. Try connecting the printer through a wire then do the discovery through the Canon software. If it works then that means using wireless , you may have to use the manual configuration of Printer rather than using discovery mode of the canon software.

Actually, no. That's not how it works. Before I built my own server, I had a DLink router and everything was on the same subnet. The software found the printer right away. That's how the MP640 works, it acts like a server on the net it is connected to. Wireless or not.

Because I have two separate subnets now, the software cannot find it because it lies in another subnet. I suspect it only sends a broadcast and waits for replies. In which case, it is only logical that it cannot find the printer.

I cannot manually specify the address either. That was the first thing I tried to do. Nowhere in the manual does it describe this method, and Canon has confirmed that it is not possible with their current version of drivers/software.