My Brother HL2170W wireless printer quit talking on the network after a neighborhood-wide power failure. When the router reset, it picked a different channel and the printer did not see the change. This can happen to any wireless device and most seem to recover - but, at least in this instance, the Brother printer did not. It had to be fixed manually. Symptoms:
- Windows control panel shows "printer offline"
- Print jobs stacked in the queue
- Printer configuration looked good - IP Addresses were preserved
- Printer did not respond to a ping over the wireless
- Rebooting the wireless router did not help
- Could not login to the printer's configuration page over wireless, but could over a wired connection
- Printer would print on the wired network but not the wireless
Although not required: Assuming you followed this Keyliner article: Setting up a Brother Printer on Wireless, you would have configured the new printer for both wired and wireless --using the same IP Address. In my case, the printer would choose 192.168.100.250 over either connection. With this setup, testing is easy: Plug in a cat5 network cable and print a test document. This proves the printer is functional and you do not have a workstation problem.
Likely Issue:
After the power failure, when the wireless (linksys or other) router rebooted, it re-negotiated a new channel because all of the other wireless routers in the neighborhood were doing the same thing at the same time. My network changed from Channel 3 to Channel 9 but the printer configuration remained on Channel 3.
It is best to leave the wireless router on the new channel. It chose that channel because of interference with other routers. Because of this, you will be forced to re-configure the printer.
Likely Solution:
In summary, follow these steps. See full details here: Setting up a Brother Printer on Wireless. Different-brand printers will have similar steps.
1. Connect the printer to a wired network
2. Open the printer's configuration screens by typing the printer's wired IP Address into a browser window.
3. In the Network Configuration screens, click "Wireless"
4. Browse for a new "Wireless Network Name (SSID)"; you will probably see a new Channel.
5. At least with the Brother configuration screens, backspace all four WEP Keys
6. Type the original passphrase that is used in the Router's setup (hopefully, you have that documented somewhere).
7. Save changes.
This will re-negotiate / re-set the channel
If you are rebooting your router manually, it will likely keep the same channel it had before because all of the other routers in the immediate area will be stable. But if the entire neighborhood is rebooting, the odds of keeping the same channel are slim.
Other Possible Issues:
Although not addressed in this article, another possibility is the printer was setup to pull a new IP Address from the DHCP auto-assigned pool. This is a poor way to configure a printer; it should be given a static IP address, far away from the variable DHCP pool. For this reason, I always configure my printers in the upper ranges, such as .240 or .250.
As I recall, if you install your printer using Brother's CD, the installation sets the printer to pull a DHCP address (non-static). This is a mistake. Following the Keyliner instructions, above, you have to go out of your way to configure the printer with a "Static" address and you would have to do extra steps to make the wired and wireless connections the same. This goes a long way towards solving many networked printer problems.
Related Links:
Reference for Brother Printer LED Indicators
Related articles:
Setting up a Brother Printer on Wireless
Brother Printer Toner Cartridges
Brother HL-2170W Laser Printer Review
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