Router-Switch-Printer problem.

I have a network that looks like this:

Cable --- WRT-54GS --- Cisco E2000 --- Brother Ethernet Printer/scanner

The E2000 is connected on a local port, IP is static on 192.168.10.XXX, and DHCP is off. Everything seems to work normally except for my printer - and this one is odd.

The PC attached to the E2000 will print and scan just fine. The WiFi PC's coming in on the WRT mostly see that printer as offline and cannot scan. I say mostly, because if they keep trying, it tends to eventually work, yet the connection between the two routers gets shutdown in the process and the Ethernet cable needs to be physically unplugged from the E200 Switch port and plugged back in for it all to work - and then, of course, the printer becomes offline to those users again.

Can anybody guess what might be going on? This sounds like a bug - more than a troubleshooting issue.

Oh - One more point, the Brother troubleshooter states "3.That your printer and your computer are both connected to the same router or hub. " but they don't explain why. I'm not aware that I'm doing any special filtering or blocking, and I am doing forwarding but on ports only related to a femtocell.

Thanks for any ideas you have.

TJude said:

I have a network that looks like this:

Cable --- WRT-54GS --- Cisco E2000 --- Brother Ethernet Printer/scanner

The E2000 is connected on a local port, IP is static on 192.168.10.XXX, and DHCP is off. Everything seems to work normally except for my printer - and this one is odd.

The PC attached to the E2000 will print and scan just fine. The WiFi PC's coming in on the WRT mostly see that printer as offline and cannot scan. I say mostly, because if they keep trying, it tends to eventually work, yet the connection between the two routers gets shutdown in the process and the Ethernet cable needs to be physically unplugged from the E200 Switch port and plugged back in for it all to work - and then, of course, the printer becomes offline to those users again.

Can anybody guess what might be going on? This sounds like a bug - more than a troubleshooting issue.

Oh - One more point, the Brother troubleshooter states "3.That your printer and your computer are both connected to the same router or hub. " but they don't explain why. I'm not aware that I'm doing any special filtering or blocking, and I am doing forwarding but on ports only related to a femtocell.

Thanks for any ideas you have.

Ok first off you should know that piggy backing two routers together does not always work like you would expect and is often times unreliable.

It's also required that you disable DHCP on one of the routers plus about ten other possible adjustments may be required to get it working right. I can't think of a good reason to use the WRT54GS in this network as you already have wireless N and gigabit Ethernet ports from the Cisco.

Ideally you want to have it like this cable>modem>CiscoE2000>networked machines both wired and wireless.

If you need more Ethernet ports just use a gigabit switch for that. :)

Thanks for the opinion. The 2nd router is located in a separate location and I don't require wireless there. I could use a plain switch, but that's effectively what I'm doing. I could swap the two routers, but I did it this way because the WRT had a faster packet forwarding rate, as I recall.

I'm happy with everything, except the printer problem.

TJude said:

Thanks for the opinion. The 2nd router is located in a separate location and I don't require wireless there. I could use a plain switch, but that's effectively what I'm doing. I could swap the two routers, but I did it this way because the WRT had a faster packet forwarding rate, as I recall.

I'm happy with everything, except the printer problem.

That's just it, the printer problem is because of your network set up.

Using a router as a switch only creates more problems due to navigation through ports and firewalls.