Give your network printer a static IP for less connection problems
Nowadays printers are commenly connected via LAN (or WiFi/WLAN) to your computer at home. They get their IP address from the router (thanks to DHCP), you find them on the network and everything is fine.
But after a certain time the DHCP-lease expires and all network devices (your desktop-computer, laptop, smartphone, printer, etc.) receive a new IP address within the DHCP-range. You still are able to get to the internet, but in some cases now your printer is shown offline even if it's turned on and connected to the network. In this case the printer has received a new IP address from the router and either you set the IP address as a new port in the printer preferences or you remove and re-install the entire printer.
To avoid this, simply give your network printer a static (the opposite of 'dynamic') IP address in the router webinterface. You need the MAC address from your network printer for this (a MAC address is hardcoded into the device); if you use the network printer on a LAN and a WLAN/WiFi parallel or alternately, each has their own MAC address - so you'd have to make two entries at your routers webinterface.
Posted Mar 29, 2015, 9:04 PM UTC
Alternatively you can refer to it by its name rather than by ip.
Yes, it depends on the router. But it's the IP that changes, not the device name.
Which is exactly my point. Rather than having the printer hostname as 192.168.1.50 you set it as "printerA" or whatever the name is and then you're done. No need to touch the router at all.
Right, just need a non shitty router. dd-wrt handles dns resolution