This has to be a personal best!

[Little-Miss]

I have to share this with you...

 

As 26 of you have noticed i opened a thread about a printer issue...

 

I've just replaced our Epson c1100's with some Kyocera's (or however you spell it lol!). Anyhoo as with most networked printers you can access a control panel via the ip. But one of the printers sends me to the old Epson one, instead of the new Kyocera one?! EH!? Bit confused about this one! Any ideas?

 

Now this has bugged me for at least an hour....when it finally dawned on my what i had done. Can any of you guess what happened? Think of the daftest thing possible.

 

I'll give you a few minutes and tell you the answer....

[featured_spectre]

Duplication of ip and the old one took priority as it had it first? Failure to set new default printer?

[plexer]

Left the old one plugged in somewhere?

 

Ben

[Little-Miss]

The prize goes to Nephilim!

 

I hadnt realised that id set an printer up in the Office with the IP i was trying to use for the new machine (as i had planned for curric printers to be in the 70's). As the office one is a Epson, i should have noticed sooner......real facepalm moment. But anyhoo enjoy my shame

[featured_spectre]

I'll have a Dr Pepper on Friday please!!!

[EduTech]

I have heard of this happen alot in the past with people not realising what IP's they have set static on the network. What i would recommend you do Kaz is get the Mac Address of the Printer and setup a Reservation in DHCP so in future this don't happen

 

James.

[GREED]

Left the old one plugged in somewhere?

 

Ben

 

That was my guess!

[Little-Miss]

True James,

 

or i could stop being a dopey cow! lol

[featured_spectre]

actually cracked up with laughter on that...Do you have a list of static IPs that you have written down? if not, it may be worth getting one done so you know what IPs you are giving out.

[SYNACK]

I have heard of this happen alot in the past with people not realising what IP's they have set static on the network. What i would recommend you do Kaz is get the Mac Address of the Printer and setup a Reservation in DHCP so in future this don't happen

 

James.

 

Which is fine untill you have a sitewide powercut and the switches, servers etc go down. When power is restored the printers boot quick and give up on DHCP before the servers and switches have booted up again leaving them with APA (169.x.x.x) adresses. You end up having to go to each one turning it off and on again so it picks up the right IP.

 

I think the best method is a mix of both, static the IP on the printer and also add it as a static lease on the DHCP server in case it looses its config, it also keeps a nice list of the current assigned IPs.

[Little-Miss]

I think the best method is a mix of both, static the IP on the printer and also add it as a static lease on the DHCP server in case it looses its config, it also keeps a nice list of the current assigned IPs.

 

I'll do that. It was just a typical "L-M not thinking things through" moment....happens a lot.

 

I'll blame my excitement for BETT!

[EduTech]

Which is fine untill you have a sitewide powercut and the switches, servers etc go down. When power is restored the printers boot quick and give up on DHCP before the servers and switches have booted up again leaving them with APA (169.x.x.x) adresses. You end up having to go to each one turning it off and on again so it picks up the right IP.

 

I think the best method is a mix of both, static the IP on the printer and also add it as a static lease on the DHCP server in case it looses its config, it also keeps a nice list of the current assigned IPs.

 

Sorry Brains, but noted and you have a good point

 

James.

[mac_shinobi]

Which is fine untill you have a sitewide powercut and the switches, servers etc go down. When power is restored the printers boot quick and give up on DHCP before the servers and switches have booted up again leaving them with APA (169.x.x.x) adresses. You end up having to go to each one turning it off and on again so it picks up the right IP.

 

I think the best method is a mix of both, static the IP on the printer and also add it as a static lease on the DHCP server in case it looses its config, it also keeps a nice list of the current assigned IPs.

 

I was thinking the same thing - DHCP Reservations using the mac address of the device in question ( printers in this case ) - we normally made it a range of ip addresses near the top end of the ip address range we had.

 

Then leave the device on dhcp ( as per above if other equipment falls over the devices that have and use the dhcp reservations may get an APIPA address )

 

http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/protocolsdhcp/g/bldef_apipa.htm

 

OR

 

Assign the device static ip address info using the correct ip address, subnet mask, dns servers, etc etc as per the reservation created previously and keep a spreadsheet with relevant device, where it is located, ip address info and I also created a bookmark / favourite in internet explorer / firefox so that I can always get to the web GUI of said device.

 

Then make a backup of all favourites when all of them are in place - if the devices have a hostname ( some copiers do ) then I also add this info to the spreadsheet.

 

When doing helpdesk work previously I used to get people to use the hostname of the copier ( assuming I could ping or do an nslookup on the hostname of the said copier ) to ensure there was connectivity there before using the hostname when the device used dhcp and they used to call up frequently until doing this as the ip address would keep changing on the said device.

 

Assuming it is on the domain ( FQDN ) and with the correct time zone, date / time etc then it would normally work. Obviously this relies on DNS resolving the hostname to an ip address but if it has a dhcp reservation or is using a static ip addy then this is not an issue.

Edited January 12, 2011 by mac_shinobi

[LosOjos]

i had planned for curric printers to be in the 70's

 

 

Did someone say 70's?

[featured_spectre]

Thats the "Shaft" of printers!

 

"Who's the baddest printer in the land that refuses to print"

"SHAFT!"

"Awwwh yeah! He's a complicated thang, and no one understands him but his driverrrssss"

"SHAFT!"

[webman]

My PrintMaster project allows you to keep track of all (network) printers, including a sortable table column for IP addresses - quick and easy to find holes or the last available address

[koryo]

Yup, il admit it, done that a few times too. Almost had that same thing happen again today! Although its two printers of the same make and model, one in a testing enviroment and another out in live use! As luck would have it we changed the address on the correct printer without a problem! phew! xD