Home Network Problem

[Jnesbitt82]

First off, if I posted this in the wrong place, feel free to move it. I had a unique problem with my home network this evening. Around 3pm, I set down to write an essay for one of my classes. I attempted to print my paper assignment but for some reason, It couldn't connect to my wireless printer. upon investigating the printer, it appeared to be in sleep mode and wouldn't wake up. So I pushed the power button to reboot it. I became sidetracked for a little bit but then returned to my computer. I noticed that my computer couldn't connect to the internet. So I pull out the iPad, no connection there either. I head to the living room and notice the hard-wired Apple TV is working but the wireless one does not. So the first step I take, reboot the wireless router. After the router starts back up, the first wireless signal works, by the time I start checking the second wireless signal,(my router broadcast 3 wireless networks), I lost wi-fi connection again. I did all the normal trouble shooting steps and finally ended up resetting it back to factory settings. After the factory reboot of the router, I set up my networks again and they still won't allow anything to connect. Being extremely annoyed at this point, i did another reboot but left the default networks name and password in place. At last, I could connect everything to my wi-fi again. I couldn't understand why my named networks wouldn't work though. Finally, I return to my office to finish my assignment when I notice that my wireless printer is still trying to shut down. It had been attempting to shut down for hours at this point. Being the expert that I am with technology, I applied a secret repair technique to my printer. I unplugged it. All of a sudden, my original wi-fi networks started working again! My question, how in the hell does a malfunctioning wi-fi printer disable a router and the 3 networks its broadcasting? Below is a list of equipment involved.

Modem: Arris CM820
Router: Belkin AC1800 DB
Home Server: Synology DS414
Printer: Canon MX340 Wireless
Interfaces: 2 Apple MBP, iPad 3rd Gen, 2 Apple TV 3rd Gen one wireless, one wired.

 

[yg17]

That's a weird one. Best guess is that the printer may have been sending some junk packets over the WiFi network that was overwhelming the router. Still a wild ass guess though on my part. That printer would've had to be really messed up.

Did you plug the printer back in yet?

 

[Southern Dad]

Any number of things could have happened. I kept having problems with my HP wireless printer screwing up my network. It turned out to be an IP address problem. It seemed when my printer would go to sleep that IP address was sometimes assigned to something else. Now, I have all my devices on static IP's and I've switched to an Airport Extreme Time Capsule as my router.

If two items had the same IP address and one was the printer, it could give you grief trying to print and cause havoc on your network.

 

[4JNA]

i've actually seen this or variations of this quite a lot. HP and Canon are the usual suspects. from sniffing traffic, most of the time it looks like a self imposed DOS attack, and everything starts acting really weird.

just my two cents, but with your wireless setup, you can just set a small ip range to hand out via DHCP, like .10 through .20 or.30 depending on how many things you want to have connected, and then put the printer at a static ip outside of the range. i always use .99 out of habit on smaller/home jobs. i can always look to see if anyone has tried to 'fix' it before calling for support.

glad you found the culprit, best of luck.

 

[Southern Dad]

I do the same when setting up static IP ranges only I use .99 for home security systems, .50 for printers and .80 for game systems. Things that may need port forwarding.