Wireless printer connection dropping,

janicem22 · 08-05-2018, 12:48 PM

How do I trouble shoot problem where laptop loses connection to wireless printer on network? Will reconnect when I restart laptop and then will print doc.

ferrari · 08-05-2018, 06:31 PM

When you mention wireless printer connection, I assume your laptop and wireless printer are both actually connected to your wireless LAN like this?

Code:

AP router
|__________________________
|             |            |
Laptop      Printer        Other hosts

Perhaps you mean your wifi connection on the laptop has dropped for some reason? Are you using NetworkManager or some other utility to manage your network connectivity? That might help us explain how to go about diagnosing this issue further. This may not be a printer-related issue at all.

frankbell · 08-05-2018, 08:35 PM

No solution, but some ideas for testing: the nest time this happens before you try restarting your computer in an effort to narrow down you list of suspects.

1. Ping the printer from you computer. If you have another device on your LAN (another computer?), ping it also.

2. If you get no response, ping the router. If you get a response, ping yahoo.com or google.com.

3. In any event, traceroute to the printer; that may give you some indication where the connection is breaking down.

Let us know what response you get.

Also, what make/model computer, what distro/version are you running, what is the wireless chipset, and how old is the wireless card?

AwesomeMachine · 08-05-2018, 11:47 PM

Have you verified that the connection is lost? Or do assume this based on the fact that it won't print? There should be a routing table on the wap you can refer to.

janicem22 · 08-06-2018, 02:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janicem22

How do I trouble shoot problem where laptop loses connection to wireless printer on network? Will reconnect when I restart laptop and then will print doc.

I have discovered that my laptop disconnects from my wireless network after a while. Hooks up okay on start but loses connection. Not printer problem but wireless problem

Rickkkk · 08-06-2018, 03:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by janicem22

I have discovered that my laptop disconnects from my wireless network after a while. Hooks up okay on start but loses connection. Not printer problem but wireless problem

Check logs on both your wireless access point and your laptop.

From a linux command prompt on your laptop:

Code:

dmesg -T | tail

... and / or ...

Code:

journalctl -xe

... for your router / access point, it undoubtedly has a log feature on its web admin page.

Start there and let us know what you find. Don't forget to try out frankbell's suggestions above as well ...

ferrari · 08-06-2018, 03:57 PM

Quote:

I have discovered that my laptop disconnects from my wireless network after a while. Hooks up okay on start but loses connection. Not printer problem but wireless problem

Which distro are you using?

It could well be due to power management issue at play. Assuming wlan0 is your wireless network device node, run the following in a terminal and report back with the output...

Code:

sudo iwconfig wlan0

scasey · 08-06-2018, 04:05 PM

My wireless printer loses connectivity...sometimes...when it goes to sleep. Not always. Cure is to reboot the printer. It doesn't appear to be a PC-side issue, since it disconnects from all the PCs on the network.

That may not have any relation to your problem, tho...