Can you use AirPrint to print to hard wired printer via your WiFi network?

Hi

A printer correctly attached to the network should absolutely continue to work through Airprint. Have you confirmed that, when you attach the printer to the ethernet, it still has a valid network address and can be found and printed to from a regular Mac/PC on the network? Some printers have to be reconfigured when you move between wired and wireless.

Matt

You can find all the information for AirPrint, and the list of all compatible printers linked below. 🙂

AirPrint basics

I am a printer tech for HP.

read this

http://www.theverge.com/2012/5/8/3006689/netgear-genie-airprint-printer-update-f eatures

Hi famdebraaf,

sorry if I use this old thread and sorry for my bad english.

I'm looking for buy a printer that support Airprint and we have the same network configuration: I have a wifi router at the first floor but the wifi connection doesn't come in the room where I would like to put the printer. In this room I have an ethernet cable and I would like to plug the printer with this cable, but I'm not sure if this "plan" could be good.

Have you solved your connection problems in these months? If yes, how have you solved it? Do you have any suggestion for me?

Thanks

Thanks for the reply.

I've already read the link. I'm looking for a Canon pixma mx 922 and it is AirPrint capable.

But my answer is different: I'm sure that will work well if connect the printer and the IOS devices on the wifi connection. But: can AirPrint works if I connect the printer to my wifi router with an Ethernet cable and the devices with wifi? Because Apple's support write "[...] the same wifi networking [...]".

Thanks

As long as you don't have wireless isolation turned on so that the wired network can't see the wireless network, you should be fine. AirPrint just requires a network connection. You can use it wired or wireless. Hope that helps a bit.

I am a printer tech for HP.

I came across this discussion when looking for a solution to a similar problem. We have an AirPrint certified printer that does not have built-in Wi-Fi. Using a USB cable it worked well with our iMac, but we also wanted to use AirPrint with our iOS devices. In our situation, we cannot run an Ethernet cable from our router (a 4th generation Airport Extreme) to either our iMac or printer. With help from Apple Support, here is what became our solution.

Using an Ethernet cable, we connected an AirPort Express router (2012 model) to the printer to provide a Wi-Fi capability to the printer. AirPrint apparently will not work with a USB cable. Because the AirPort Express was being repurposed, we reset it using what Apple refers to as a “Factory” or “Default Settings reset.” With the reset completed, the Express became visible within Airport Utility, showing a connection to the Extreme. Within Airport Utility, click on the Airport Express to open its status window; click on the Edit button, then the Wireless tab, and then select “Join a wireless network” within the Network Mode options. This made the Express into a “wireless bridge” between the printer and the Extreme, allowing our iOS devices to see the AirPrint printer. Our iMac also connects wirelessly to the printer.

Within Airport Utility, we could have selected “Extend a wireless network” as the Network Mode, however because we rely on a wireless connection between the Extreme and Express, doing so has the potential of reducing throughput among Wi-Fi devices because of the resulting network overhead. We had been using Printopia to allow our iOS devices to work with an earlier non-AirPrint printer. To avoid conflicts we turned Printopia off, accessing it within the iMac’s System Preferences. AirPrint is easier to use and provides better printer output than did Printopia.

When our HP printer sleeps, the iMac computer wakes it up as needed, however the sleeping printer becomes invisible to the iOS devices. We hope to fix this weakness, possibly by resetting the printer's sleep setting.

I also have a Canon pixma mx 922 and just set it up using (wired) Ethernet. AirPrint worked fine when I printed an email from my iPhone. I haven't done further testing.

The Ethernet cable goes from my MX922 directly into our AirPort Extreme WiFi base station. However, I'm sure any configuration would work, as long as there is wifi somewhere on your Ethernet network.

The reason I switched from the WiFi option to wired option is that the printer kept disappearing from our network. I had seen other people complain about this online. At first, I thought I had fixed it by forcing the printer to connect only to the nearest base station, by specifying its MAC address (which is a bit of a pain). However, even after that, the printer went AWOL, and after half an hour of trying to get it back on the WiFi, I just pulled out an Ethernet cable, and plugged it in. Problems solved, so far at least.

Canon should really make the printer automatically select the nearest, strongest signal! The MAC address business is too difficult for a novice. And they should look into this wonky behavior, as well. And also mention that AirPrint will work over a wired connection. Oh, and while I'm at it, they need a better translator, too. Much of the text in English is awkwardly worded to the point of being hard to figure out. I know some good translators... :-)

The Canon MX922 has serious wifi disconnect problems due to the default settings for WLAN. It is set to disconnect if not used after a certain period of time. This has driven many users crazy, including me. The setting can be changed this way:

To disable this feature:

1. Select Setup on your printer's Menu panel
2. Select Device Settings
3. Select LAN Settings
4. Select Other settings
5. And then Wireless LAN DRX setting
6. Set this option to Disabled

This helped me make my unusable MX922 a model wifi citizen after trying many, many different things. Hope that helps.