HP printer goes off-line unpredictably

Hello Jjdsyd ,

Thanks for reaching out to us and welcome to the Community! I would like to help you troubleshoot this behavior if you are willing. Can you answer a few questions so I can get a better idea of what we're working with? When you setup your printer, did you connect it to your eero network while the 5GHz was disabled or does the printer connect to 5GHz? Are any other devices experiencing this behavior? Also, what model of printer do you have?

James Thanks James. I did not disable the 5GHz network when I connected it (and I have done this a number of times of course). But, it only ever connects to the 2.4GHz connect. 

The printer model is HP4630. No other devices do this. But, my entire network regularly (once a day at least)  drops its IP connection completely, despite router remaining connected at high speed. Take a reboot to reestablish.  

Also, my 3 hard wired and 1 wireless eero do not play nicely with FaceTime on iOS. I get a clear picture followed by the video dropping out (my video out that is) and a “Poor Connection” message from FT. This despite having +100Mbps speeds and no issues with Zoom or Teams.  Strange and frustrating. (And if I toggle to 5G the video immediately comes back).  I am not saying this is related to the issue with the printer, but they both only occur with the eeros. 

Thanks. 

Hello Jjdsyd ,
I understand how frustrating this can be. I've listed some additional steps you can take to try and resolve this behavior as well below.

1) Check the eero Labs features and disable them one by one and monitor your network so we can rule out any of those settings potentially causing problems with devices on your network

2) Check the placement of your eeros. We usually recommend customer start out by placing eeros around 35-45ft away from any other eero and then move them closer only if the eeros themselves are getting bad signal strength. You wouldn't need to do this with the wired eeros, but spreading the wired eeros out can help reduce WiFi traffic and relieve other congestion behaviors that might be affecting your devices. The article below will walk you through our other placement guidelines.

https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/207897393-Where-should-I-place-my-eeros-#:~:text=For%20a%20quick%20and%20easy,eeros%20out%20around%20your%20home.

3) Check if your printer has a sleep mode. If it does, check with the manufacturer if you can disable it to test.

4) It sounded like you have an upstream router to your eero network. That would put the eero network in a double NAT and could potentially be the cause of the periodic drops. If your eero network is in a double NAT try setting the upstream router to bridge mode or the eero network to bridge mode and see if that helps. You can also place the Gateway eero into the DMZ of the upstream router to test.

If none of those steps work please reach out to us so we can troubleshoot further. I'll share a link below with the phone numbers you can call. However, if you would rather troubleshoot over email we can do that as well. I will also send you a direct message with instructions on how to get an email to me as well shortly.

https://support.eero.com/hc/en-us/articles/207376426-How-do-I-contact-eero-support-

Thanks James  I will respond directly to your email per your suggestion so as not to clog up the forum. But for anyone else’s benefit:

1) all the Labs features are disabled

2) the eeros are more than 50 feet apart (and wired)

3) as discussed earlier in this thread the printer does have sleep mode but it be disabled and it should not drop the wifi connection (doesn’t AirPort Extreme)

4) The Gateway eero is connected directly to the cable modem (there is no other router in between so no double NAT issue). 

I afraid these are not the solutions to this issue. 

James Some of these answers make no sense (double net on upstream router???).  The way I see it, the Eero simply is not renewing the DHCP lease to the printer.  I have two laserjet printers, an LJ276NW and an LJ277NW.  The 277 works just find and the 276 goes offline at the time I might expect the DHCP list to attempt to renew.  Unfortunately, the Eero configuration tools is to "simply" to, say, allow you to set your DHCP lease/renewal interval.  This CLEARLY an Eero problem as this issue has never arisen on my prior routers.  After the time elapses and printer goes offline, it is no longer even pingable, yet the printer is turned on and active (NOT sleeping).

I fear Eero does not have any networking (DHCP) experts on their team and thus tend to blame it on everything else in your network.

Moving the devices makes no sense as the printer connects fine if I reboot it (so why would it later be confused).  This is clearly an Eero networking issue.

Hello MattHousley ,

Thank you for reaching out to us on the Community! Lets start digging into this. What troubleshooting have you done so far with the printer? Just to make sure, your printer is connecting but then disconnecting from the network later correct? Did you try power cycling your eero network? Do you know if your printer has a sleep mode?

Hi James,

Thanks for getting back to me.

"What troubleshooting have you done so far with the printer?"
The printer was originally set up for DHCP, but I've changed this to a static IP (reserving the IP address in the EERO IP Settings). This made no difference. 

"your printer is connecting but then disconnecting from the network later correct?"
Yes.

"Did you try power cycling your eero network?"
Yes. Problem remains.

"Do you know if your printer has a sleep mode?"
Yes, it's set to sleep after 5 minutes and to never power off.

Cheers

Matt

Hello MattHousley ,

Thank you for the answers. Are any other devices experiencing this disconnect behavior? Lets try connecting your printer to the eero network and verify it is connected in the eero app. Watch the printer for the 5 minutes and when it goes to sleep please check the eero app and see if it dropped connection to the eero Network.

James 

"Are any other devices experiencing this disconnect behavior?"
No.

"Lets try connecting your printer to the eero network..."
The printer power light goes off after about 50 minutes (even though sleep is set to 5 minutes). It's stayed visible in the Eero app and available on the network (checked through the iOS App "HP Smart") for 20 hours now.
I've got a feeling that checking to see if it's available regularily (which I assume issues a Ping or the like) must be keeping the connection alive...

Thoughts? I'm happy to try anything else you suggest to help.

Thanks

Matt

Hello MattHousley ,

What is your SSID name on your network? Does it have any special characters in it? If you continue to experience the disconnect behavior and your SSID has any special characters in it, that could also be the cause of the problem. If you do have special characters in your SSID, try removing them, reconnect the printer, and monitor it. If you're printer is staying connected now though, continue to monitor and let me know if the behavior comes back up.

James 

The SSID is “TheTwilightZone” so no special characters.

I’ll monitor and get back to you.

Thanks

Matt

Hello MattHousley ,

Sounds good. Reply here if you continue to experiencing this behavior and we'll get a ticket started so we can take a look into the network and the logs on the backend.

James 

I’ve just checked again, having not looked on the eero or HP app since posting my reply yesterday and it’s dropped off both.

Let me know how you want to proceed.

Cheers

Matt

Hello MattHousley ,

Alright. We'll want to get some time stamps of when the printer dropped offline and once you have those follow the instructions I will send you over direct message so we can get a ticket created and take a look into the logs.

James Thanks. Message sent.

jstevans I would almost guarantee you, as an old time Network geek who managed a large Enterprises DHCP implementation, that this is a problem with their DHCP process. Devices regularly query the network to have their address renewed by the routers. If the routers do not respond to this then they get dropped from the network with no address. And you can see that these devices have no address when you look at a configuration page from the printer itself. Given any other router that I've ever had has managed the connections to their printers just fine as you have noted, you have to assume it is a problem with hero. The printers are not the piece that have changed here. My solution initially was was to have to just restart the printer every time I used it. Ultimately I ended up cabling it directly to a wired Network that was connected directly to the euro. Kind of defeats the purpose of having Wi-Fi doesn't it?

jstevans thanks!