Airprint Not Working Since Installing Mesh WiFi Network

Is the laptop also printing using AirPrint? Or is it vendor drivers?

Does connecting the printers to the network vis wire work better?

Does the printer work when configured for ad hoc or for non-mesh Wi-Fi network?

(You have a lot of parts involved here, and AirPrint is pretty widely used. Which means you’ll want to try some different combinations. Hence the above questions.)

Check for firmware updates from the printer vendor(s), and firmware updates for the Wi-Fi mesh routers, and apply the latest available.

See if the printers work better when wired into the network, too.

I have a solution for this that worked for me, and since I’ve scoured the internet and haven’t found this solution I will post it here. I had the same problem, Orbi (especially when satellite is on), would not allow the Canon MF printer to been seen on Apple devices for AirPrint. I struggled for a long time, and last night I tried something that worked. I enabled IPv6 both on the Orbi (in advanced settings at the bottom), and also on the printer (in the on-screen menus). On the printer I also have it acquiring a manual IP address instead of an automatically assigned one.. and the one I am manually requesting is in a different format than the router assigns. For example the router assigns 192.168.1.etc, and I have the printer requesting 10.0.0.243. The moment I enabled IPv6 on both devices, my problem went away. Now my printer can be connected to the satellite at 2.4Ghz, and my iPhone connected to the router at 5Ghz and AirPrint still works perfectly. Hope this helps.

bryans1378 wrote:

I have a solution for this that worked for me, and since I’ve scoured the internet and haven’t found this solution I will post it here. I had the same problem, Orbi (especially when satellite is on), would not allow the Canon MF printer to been seen on Apple devices for AirPrint. I struggled for a long time, and last night I tried something that worked. I enabled IPv6 both on the Orbi (in advanced settings at the bottom), and also on the printer (in the on-screen menus). On the printer I also have it acquiring a manual IP address instead of an automatically assigned one.. and the one I am manually requesting is in a different format than the router assigns. For example the router assigns 192.168.1.etc, and I have the printer requesting 10.0.0.243.

Printers don’t request a specific IPv4 address.

They use a temporary self-assigned link-local IPv4 address (169.254.0.1 to 169.254.255.254, per RFC3927) to contact the local DHCP server, and ask that to issue the device an IPv4 address, as well as some other local network configuration information.

Printers and most other IPv4 devices can be configured to use a specific IPv4 address, however. That’s a setting within the device. Check the device docs for details on the device-specific network setup.

The moment I enabled IPv6 on both devices, my problem went away. Now my printer can be connected to the satellite at 2.4Ghz, and my iPhone connected to the router at 5Ghz and AirPrint still works perfectly. Hope this helps.

I was having the same problem with Deco Mesh system.

What worked for me was to ensure that the security protocol for my Network provided router and Mesh routers are the same.

Initially, my Network router was WPA/WPA2 and my mesh router was WPA2/WPA3.

I changed this so that both are WPA2/WPA3.

Once I did that my printer miraculously showed up on Airprint.

Please note, I was not having any issues with my Macbook as I added the printer manually using IP address but we cant do that on iOS.

chhabramohit wrote:

I was having the same problem with Deco Mesh system.

What worked for me was to ensure that the security protocol for my Network provided router and Mesh routers are the same.

Usual for an ISP-provided router would be setting it into its bridged mode, and migrating the NAT and firewall and related functions (entirely) to the mesh router.

Trying to run a mixed-vendor mesh, or running with double NAT, tends not to end well, too. Not unless the mesh router vendor indicates that mixed-vendor configuration works.

Running two separate routers also usually means two DHCP servers too, which can cause the problem reported above.

[Or you have a second DHCP server lurking, and issuing 10/8 addresses.]