Wifi Printer connected to a switch is not visible to the machines on the main router

[lahoreia]

I have a situation where I have a router connected to cable modem. I have a wire run through that to a switch on the upper storey. This switch is really another router with disabled DHCP, and connected to main router through its LAN port. Both the router and the switch are setup as wireless access points as well. The SSID for both are kept different so as it becomes easier for me to troubleshoot, if there is any issue in connecivity. Now, I have a printer that is conected to the switch's wifi network. The issue is that this printer is seen only by the machines that are connected to the switch. Anything coming from the main router cannot see the printer at all.

To further troubleshoot the issue, I have set up fixed IP addresses for both the switch and the printer (on the main router). I also tried naming the SSIDs on both devices the same, but that also did not help.

Here are some of the details:
IP address of main router: 192.168.1.1
IP address of the switch: 192.168.1.254
IP address of the printer: 192.168.1.253

Any help in this regard will be highly appreciated.

 

[bill001g]

Can the machines on the switch (ie AP) communicate with machine on the main router. What happens if you take a PC and connect it to the wireless on the AP. Is it only the printer or is it a generic issue that anything on the wireless on the AP cannot talk to the main router network.

 

[lahoreia]

Can the machines on the switch (ie AP) communicate with machine on the main router. What happens if you take a PC and connect it to the wireless on the AP. Is it only the printer or is it a generic issue that anything on the wireless on the AP cannot talk to the main router network.

well, I do not have extensive setup to test every possible scenario. I usually use my mac downstairs and a windows machine upstairs. I can access the windows machine from downstairs using mac's smb protocol. I also have a synology datastore connected to the switch upstairs through a wired connection. Initially, my mac was seeing that server, but lately time machine does not see that anymore. I have reasons to believe that it is probably because of mac's upgrade to OS 10.7 rather than any other networking issue.

 

[bill001g]

The best thing to use is the ping command to check connectivity. It will quickly rule out basic network issues compared to more complex file/printer sharing issues.

It should just work the setup is simple in most cases. I have seen people set the wireless option on the device they are using as a AP to things like repeater mode or something else and it does not work as expected.

 

[lahoreia]

The best thing to use is the ping command to check connectivity. It will quickly rule out basic network issues compared to more complex file/printer sharing issues.

It should just work the setup is simple in most cases. I have seen people set the wireless option on the device they are using as a AP to things like repeater mode or something else and it does not work as expected.

The latest is that I am able to at least access the printer's web service page using it's IP address (192.168.1.253). I restarted both the router and the switch upstairs to at least get this far. However, still if I try to add the printer on my machine downstairs it does not see it. I tried adding as it is an IPP device, but that also did not work.

 

[lahoreia]

Well, at the end it turned out there was nothing wrong with the setup. The mac would not discover the printer directly over the network (using 'bonjour' protocol) as it would if connected through my switch's SSID. However, finally I was able to add and use the printer as IPP.

Thank you all for the help