[SOLVED] Brother Laserjet - slow to print after going from Cat5e to USB2

Keystone4132

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I built a new system (Ryzen 9 3900X/Asus Prime X570 Pro) but connected it to an existing laserjet (Brother MFC 9340CDW). Ever since then, print jobs have been slow to start and print. Other than the PC, the only difference is that previously the printer connected to my PC by Cat5e and my home network. This time I connected it directly with a 20 ft USB 2.0 printer cable.

So, I assume the USB cable is the bottleneck. I see some USB C (3.2) type printer cables out there.

My question: Will my MFC 9340 be able to take advantage of USB 3.2 speed, as it was mfg before that standard? Will it be as fast/faster than Cat5e. I know Cat5e wire is faster, foot for foot, but I thought a shorter, direct connection via USB should be better than sending a signal by Cat5e to the other side of the house, through the switch and back.

Thanks
 
Solution
You are most likely correct that it is the USB length -- that is beyond the high speed USB spec length of 5m. I've always used Ethernet although my printer is right next to my main computer because Ethernet is very fast (<0.1ms) and is very high capacity for my large print jobs.

Since the printer is older, I do not think that a newer USB cable type will help.

edit: having recently been reading way too much physics, as THIS BLOG discusses, while each electron may move slowly the movement of voltage from one end of a wire to the other is a significant percentage of the speed of light, so a long CAT5e cable is of no consequence. Part of the issue may also be that the printer's Ethernet connection is a lot more efficient...

RealBeast

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You are most likely correct that it is the USB length -- that is beyond the high speed USB spec length of 5m. I've always used Ethernet although my printer is right next to my main computer because Ethernet is very fast (<0.1ms) and is very high capacity for my large print jobs.

Since the printer is older, I do not think that a newer USB cable type will help.

edit: having recently been reading way too much physics, as THIS BLOG discusses, while each electron may move slowly the movement of voltage from one end of a wire to the other is a significant percentage of the speed of light, so a long CAT5e cable is of no consequence. Part of the issue may also be that the printer's Ethernet connection is a lot more efficient than the USB connection.
 
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Solution
I built a new system (Ryzen 9 3900X/Asus Prime X570 Pro) but connected it to an existing laserjet (Brother MFC 9340CDW). Ever since then, print jobs have been slow to start and print. Other than the PC, the only difference is that previously the printer connected to my PC by Cat5e and my home network. This time I connected it directly with a 20 ft USB 2.0 printer cable.

So, I assume the USB cable is the bottleneck. I see some USB C (3.2) type printer cables out there.

My question: Will my MFC 9340 be able to take advantage of USB 3.2 speed, as it was mfg before that standard? Will it be as fast/faster than Cat5e. I know Cat5e wire is faster, foot for foot, but I thought a shorter, direct connection via USB should be better than sending a signal by Cat5e to the other side of the house, through the switch and back.

Thanks

It's not the speed of the USB connection, printing does not take a lot of bandwidth. Length of cable is pretty much irrelevant, data travels very fast over USB or CAT 5, the difference in time it takes to travel a 6 foot cable vs a 1,000 foot cable won't be measurable by a human. I doubt you can tell the difference even if the signal had to travel across town vs next door, you may have a mistaken idea about how data transmission works.

However how the print jobs are created and sent are different for USB vs Ethernet. Why not connect the printer to the network again if that made it faster? Changing computers should not matter how you connect the printer.
 

Keystone4132

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Well, I swapped back to an ethernet connection: PC-->8 port switch--> 12 ft cat 5e patch cord --> Brother MFC9340CDW.

I have the same issue. The printer wakes soon after the I press print and then it just idles for about 60 seconds before printing a page, then idle the print..etc.
 

Keystone4132

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Try loading newer firmware to the printer, and see if there are newer drivers from the Brother support page for it for the computer.

Sorry for slow response and thanks for your suggestion. Covid-19 has kept me busy. This is a new build with all current drivers, but I installed and ran the Brother Update Tool and it verified I have the latest.