Macs and the Dell 3100cn laser printer

[DavidCooke]

I am having problems connecting to my new laser which is connected to my linksys wireless router. I have 2 macs running OS X and one OS 9.2 all connected wirelessly to the router.

It worked the first time for one of the OS X computers (a mac mini). I connected but when I switched it on again, the IP address had changed and even if I change it on the settings on the computer to the new IP, it fails to print (though it is connecting).

Any help would be appreciated.

David

 

[nixgeek]

Is the printer connected directly to the router (with it's own network interface)? If so, then you need to apply a static IP to the printer, otherwise when it's lease runs out the Macs will still be looking for the printer at it's old address.

Remember that you are sharing through TCP/IP, so even though it's being resolved by name, it's attached to an IP address. Having the IP address change every so often will cause this problem which is why it needs to be set statically. The Macs, on the other hand, can stay dynamic.

Consider this the same reason it's bad practice to use DHCP on a web server. You would have to have a service like DynDNS to receive updates from the server once the IP changes.