Airprint over vlans/subnets

[Sheridan]

Has anyone managed to get airprint to work with their wireless devices across seperate vlans or subnets? We've got xirrus wireless on a seperate vlan, and multiple vlans for computers but as they're all school devices they can see each other through the router. When trying to use an HP printer app to find a printer on the network this doesn't work, neither does airprint on the same printer. The routing is pretty simple - both devices can ping each other so I know they're visible

 

I know airprint is pretty ropey and designed for home/flat networks but has anyone found a workaround? I don't mind having to manually add the printer as I'm not bothered about getting bonjour broadcasts enabled across the network.

[Norphy]

AirPrint is yet another service that uses Bonjour to publish itself. Bonjour of course is a broadcast protocol so it can't traverse subnets without help.

 

I think you have two options:

 

1) Use a bonjour gateway to publish your bonjour devices from one subnet to another. I use Avahi to do this at the moment but most decent wireless systems have one built in these days, as do modern HP switches

2) If you're using an iOS device, install an AirPrint profile on it. You can specify the IP address of the printer in there so as long as there's routing between the network segments that the devices live in, the device should be able to find the printer.

[AlanD]

Most printer manufacturers have an APP that you can install - supporting both iOS and Android. You can then print a QR code and stick it on the side of the printer. On the device, start the app and show it the QR code. Then "Send" what you what to print to the APP (..no you don't actually choose print....confusingly). And yes it works across VLANS and Subnets just fine as long as you have rules - either in your core switch - or in our case in smoothwall (which is our default gateway). I quite like having the rules in smoothwall because its AD aware and you can therefore choose which groups are allowed to print to which printers.

 

I don't find Bonjour particularly useful in a school because in our case 40+ printers would show up in a select list - and inevitably, students (and certainly staff) would pick the wrong one.

[Sheridan]

Our iOS devices are all meraki MDM so maybe a profile is the way to do it. I've tried the HP app and it doesn't find the printer even when specifying the IP address (and I can ping it from the same device!)

 

Another symptom of ipads being designed for home use!

[AlanD]

If you use the APP and it doesn't find the printer....then there can't be a route between the device and the printer.

[Cw2k]

Do you have PaperCut ? They have the MobiltyPrint server which handles end user managed devices and handles subnets.

[Sheridan]

If you use the APP and it doesn't find the printer....then there can't be a route between the device and the printer.

 

The hp one doesn't support subnets as far as I can see.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Do you have PaperCut ? They have the MobiltyPrint server which handles end user managed devices and handles subnets.

 

No - but we are considering moving to it as part of a new managed system, this might be another reason to do it

[richbrowncardiff]

Depends on your switching and routing. On our unifi network all worked no issues. On the Netgear network i had to enable Bonjour, Multicast routing, MLD Snooping on the core and MDNS reflection on the router. Then enable bonjour forwarding at the edge as well.

 

A bit of faffing but only took about an hour to make the required changed. We also use Papercut mobility print and airserver.

[AlanD]

The hp one doesn't support subnets as far as I can see.

 

 

No; its your gateway that needs to have a route. So when these (wireless?) devices connect - what is their gateway? Is this your internet firewall/UTM - or is it your core switch. Either way you will need to add a route in the gateway (and there needs to be a return path too). This has nothing to do with the APP, or the wireless AP. You need a route between the subnets/VLANs. Presumably if you have VLANs - you already have some routes - you just need to add another (assuming, perhaps incorrectly - that you already have stuff on one VLAN talking to stuff on another).

[MatthewL]

Do you have PaperCut ? They have the MobiltyPrint server which handles end user managed devices and handles subnets.

 

You still have to modify your DNS if you use different VLAN's for this to work. Although all you do it enter your IP's and then run a few commands on your DNS server its not just straight out the box.

[markwilfan]

Do you have PaperCut ? They have the MobiltyPrint server which handles end user managed devices and handles subnets.

We use this. Works well for all vlans

[caffrey]

I've been running an avahi gateway on a raspberry pi for years, just checked and it's got a 208 day uptime. I've been meaning to get rid as I believe Unifi has a multicast DNS option, we also run with the Papercut mobility server too.

[ITGuyWestMidlands]

I've been running an avahi gateway on a raspberry pi for years, just checked and it's got a 208 day uptime. I've been meaning to get rid as I believe Unifi has a multicast DNS option, we also run with the Papercut mobility server too.

Pretty sure you need the USG for mDNS to work

[caffrey]

Pretty sure you need the USG for mDNS to work

 

Yep, we have one

[psydii]

+1 Papercut Mobility Print set it up, it just works. No violating of layer2/3 boundaries required.

 

https://www.papercut.com/support/resources/manuals/mobility-print/mobility-print-server/topics/how-it-works.html

 

https://www.papercut.com/support/resources/manuals/mobility-print/mobility-print-server/topics/how-to-set-up.html

[Another]

Hi - I setup Presto at my old school to avoid this issue. Not only was it simple to setup it rarely went wrong. Wasn't crazy money and good support too. https://www.collobos.com/

[Sheridan]

I'm reluctant to spend too much time getting the ropey bonjour to work across subnets as it means all the airprint printers (and Airserve devices) will then be visible to everyone. We're actually looking at papercut for next year now so maybe that's a better option anyway

[Sheridan]

No; its your gateway that needs to have a route. So when these (wireless?) devices connect - what is their gateway? Is this your internet firewall/UTM - or is it your core switch. Either way you will need to add a route in the gateway (and there needs to be a return path too). This has nothing to do with the APP, or the wireless AP. You need a route between the subnets/VLANs. Presumably if you have VLANs - you already have some routes - you just need to add another (assuming, perhaps incorrectly - that you already have stuff on one VLAN talking to stuff on another).

 

We have routing between the wireless VLAN and the wired VLAN the printers are on at the core/gateway - the mobile devices can ping the printers OK, but the HP app simply fails to connect.