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[Peter.Weyland]

I have two WiFI printers here on my LAN that work perfectly fine when the NAS is powered down but become unavailable when the NAS is operating.
I'm guessing there is a print server running on the 320L which is clobbering the Wifi printers.
I have firmware 1.04 installed.
Can I SSH into the 320L & kill the print server?
If so how?

[ivan]

What you are describing sounds like an IP address conflict, and sorry you can't 'kill' the print server.

How is your DNS-320L set up, fixed IP address or does it get it from the DHCP server which I assume is in your wireless router.
How do you know which printer to use, IP address or name?
What operating system are you using and if windows what version?

If you are using windows download Netscan https://www.softperfect.com/products/networkscanner/ against your network to find the IP addresses of everything on your network.  This will show up any network conflicts which you should be able to fix by assigning fixed IPs to the NAS and printers.

[Peter.Weyland]

What you are describing sounds like an IP address conflict, and sorry you can't 'kill' the print server.

How is your DNS-320L set up, fixed IP address or does it get it from the DHCP server which I assume is in your wireless router.
How do you know which printer to use, IP address or name?
What operating system are you using and if windows what version?

If you are using windows download Netscan https://www.softperfect.com/products/networkscanner/ against your network to find the IP addresses of everything on your network.  This will show up any network conflicts which you should be able to fix by assigning fixed IPs to the NAS and printers.

Hello Linux user here.
I just knew someone was going to say this :-/
Our LAN is managed with manual IP assignments. I have triple checked all IP's on our LAN & checked for intrusions (none).

Code: [Select]

Separate issue :
I have just updated the firmware on the DNS-320L to v1.08b and lost all connectivity to our data..
Right now I'm in the process of nuking & recreating all shares/users which is working albeit s-l-o-w.
Fun..
I'll go back & recheck our IP's again, if the problem persists I'll decommission the DNS-320L & set up a DIY server to replace.

Cheers..

[ivan]

Hi Peter,

For your information about 90% of those posting problems here use windows so it is natural to assume you were since you didn't say otherwise.

One thing I should have asked is what brand and model are the printers?

My company and our clients don't use windows either (we use OS/2 from IBM with the odd Linux server for odd things).  We also have several clients that are using WiFi connected printers in association with various DNS models including the DNS-320L.  Since we have not heard of any problems I can only assume that everything is working correctly.

Another thing you can check, it may not apply in your situation, is WiFi 'contamination' from another WiFi unit.  I have seen this in a small office block where a WiFi enabled printer started printing odd documents not related to the company in question (they were using it on a wired network).  Another company on the floor below were 'losing' print jobs. My technician solved the problem by moving the Wireless access point of the ground floor company.

Please let me know what you end up doing because I and my staff are scratching our heads over this.  There is no logical way a NAS on a fixed IP address with no wireless unit can effect a wireless enabled unit on a different IP address unless the WiFi unit is getting an IP address from the DHCP server that is the same as the NAS.   

[Peter.Weyland]

Hello Ivan, thank you very much for your thoughtful answer & helpful suggestions.
Wow OS/2 eh? I'm envious of anyone who gets to use that very fine operating system!
We've been Windows free for a long time but had a gaggle of Macs as well. These 7 year old Macs are still in perfect working order but will be made obsolete by the next release of Mac OS so I have installed Linux on them & they now work better than ever

So this is screaming IP address conflict despite having everything carefully manually assigned. This led me in frustration to start powering off machines one by one looking for a culprit. It wasn't until I powered off the 320L that the WiFi printers started to behave. Most of our printers are HP WiFi only units only configurable from a web interface that run like sewing machines. The other printers are Brother MFC's which have both Wireless & Ethernet interfaces but on our LAN they are used Wirelessly. Doing a scan of our network showed one of these Brother units twice. Inspecting the unit revealed an Ethernet cable connected to it that one of my users had decided it needed 'to make it go faster'. I logged into the units management interface & noted that the Ethernet interface was configured as 'disabled' as expected & almost overlooked that it was assigned the same IP as the units Wireless interface. Apparently in Brother firmware speak 'disabled' does not mean inactive as you would expect... I changed the Ethernet IP to a non conflicting addy & unplugged the cable for good measure with result printers all available again. Looks like the DHCP server was freaking out & the 320L was unfairly blamed.

[ivan]

Thank you for that information Peter.

From our experience of Brother printers 'disabled' only means that option does not appear in the windows printer interface, that is all.  On the printer everything continues to work.

As an aside, we have been using OS/2 since version 2.1 and since many of our clients have equipment too expensive to write off that use OS/2 to control them we are doing very well thank you.

[Peter.Weyland]

Thank you for that information Peter.

From our experience of Brother printers 'disabled' only means that option does not appear in the windows printer interface, that is all.  On the printer everything continues to work.

Indeed, so it seems.. tricks for young players eh?

OS/2 2.0 : One of the great tragedies of computing history.
We should have been all running OS/2 on our desktops by 1995 but not only did IBM fail to develop their own OS for the newly developed fledgling PC, instead contracting it out to a college dropout who then cobbled together the plagiarized abortion known as 'MS-DOS' and compounded this by granting royalties on this OS failing to appreciate the huge market for 'PC's'.  Then after realising their mistake they set about using their in house expertise to develop a new PC operating system themselves that could wipe the floor with MS-DOS. That OS evolved into OS/2 2.0 but sadly IBM totally mismanaged the marketing of it whilst making the same mistake many other firms have made - trusting Microsoft. Microsoft working in conjunction with IBM ripped off the Graphical 'Presentation manager' interface of OS/2 & hastily grafted it on top of their inadequate MS-DOS, rushed it to market with big marketing budget beating IBM to market with a grossly inferior product.
This garbage known as 'Windows' succeeded through slick marketing & rapacious business practices.
When IBM brought their new OS to market they failed to disclose its hardware requirements which, for its time were heavier than Windows & then killed it completely by telling users seeking help they needed to pay huge support fees. As expected mom & dad users were driven away in droves.
What a great shame..