Brand new Mac Book Pro 16" running macOS Monterey 12.2.1. Brand new Brother HL-L2395DW Laser Printer.
Both connected to WiFi but mac cannot find / connect to the printer. Software up to date on mac, firmware up to dat on printer. Any suggestions? Suspect the problem is TPLink Router. Thank you.
MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 12.2
• set
System Preferences > Network > Wi-Fi > (advanced) >TCP/IP > IPv6 ... to Link-local only
ON may cause routing activity that interferes with your networking. OFF will make it hard to find printers and other services on your network.
So that it can be used by all devices on your Network, the Printer needs to know three things:
1) what network-name is it supposed to join
2) what is the password to get on that network
3) how is it supposed to get an IP address (DHCP or manual at a specified address)
There are basically two ways to get these into the Printer:
a) fat-finger it in through the printer's "front panel"
b) connect using a USB cable first, tell it the stuff, then disconnect the cable
without all three of these, it can't join your home network, so it can't be 'discovered'.
MacOS has a great feature called Discovery protocol. It uses IPv6 set to "link-local only" to snoop around you local network and discover Printers, File sharing , and similar resources.
Using a VPN? That puts you an a different network than your Printer.
My previous post got auto-corrected because my typing was so bad.
can you PING the IP address of the Printer from your Mac?
https://www.wikihow.com/Ping-on-Mac-OS
.
Thank you, some progress.
Printer now shows up in "Add Printer." Even selects proper Driver info.
But when select "Add" get a message of "Unable to communicate with the printer at this time" and if select "Add" a second time get message of "An error occurred while trying to add the selected device."
Also turned router off / on, same with printer.
No on the VPN. Both printer and mac are on the same network.
Tried also a reset on the printer. Then a shut-down and re-start on the printer, router and mac.
Rechecked software on mac is up-to-date.
A bit of a mystery, thank you anyway.
Yes, entered the IP address of the printer into the mac and get the same result.
Strongly suspect that the problem lies with the router. It is a TP Link unit built by Archer. They claim to have a utility that addresses this issue but Apple warns not to load it. The printer connects to to Wifi without issues as does the mac. But attempts by the mac to communicate with the printer through the router always fail.
Will get a new (non-TP Link) router and move on.
Thank you for the suggestions. They are much appreciated.
MacBookPro cannot find Brother HL-L2395
