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AirPrint Information and FAQ

All, I figured I'd start one of my famous FAQ threads here to help head off some of the problems. So with that being said, lets get started.

Q: What is AirPrint?
A: AirPrint enables printing from a supported iOS 4.2 device to supported AirPrint enabled printers. Today several HP models support AirPrint.

Apple AirPrint Information and Printer list:
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4356

Apple AirPrint Support Page:
http://www.apple.com/ipad/features/airprint.html

HP AirPrint Information and Printer list:
http://www.hp.com/go/airprint

HP AirPrint Support Page:
http://www.hp.com/sbso/printing/mac/hp-airprint.html

Q: I don't have one of the supported printers, is there any other way for me to get AirPrint to work?
A: Yes, there are several third party AirPrint Sharing Solutions for the Mac (although I am not personally endorsing any of them):

FingerPrint
http://www.collobos.com/

Printopia for Mac
http://www.ecamm.com/mac/printopia/

If you have a problem with a specific printer while using one of these applications, please direct the question to vendor that wrote the app.

Q: Does AirPrint work directly with any Printer?
A: No. At this time, only select models from HP work with Airprint.

Q: Can I share a printer from my Mac and print to it?
A: See the above question for the 3rd party products that enable AirPrint Sharing.

Q: Can I connect a USB printer to my AirPort BaseStation (Express, Extreme, TimeCapsule)?
A: This is not supported. See above.

Q: Can I use AirPrint with my older HP printers?
A: This is not supported by HP. See above.

Q: I have one of the supported printers that is supposed to work now, but I'm not seeing it. What's wrong?
A: Make sure you have updated to the latest firmware available. You can check in:

Tools->Web->Automatic Updates->Check for Product Updates.

Note that you may need to enable eWeb Services to see the updates.

Q: I have on of the printers that will be supported in the future (ie one of the Officejets), when will it be supported?
A: While at the moment the latest official answer is December 27th. I hope to be able to update this soon with an earlier date, but it will still be sometime in December.

Q: I have an iPhone 3G or a second gen iPod touch. I have iOS 4.2, but I am not seeing AirPrint, can you help?
A: AirPrint only shows up on iOS devices that support multitasking. While these devices have iOS 4.2 available for them, they do not support multitasking and hence do not support AirPrint.

Q: I still can't figure this out, what am I doing wrong?
A: Hopefully HP will have a support doc posted later today with pictures to help you work through the steps. I'll post a separate link to that document once its ready.

I will build on this list in this thread over time if you have questions that aren't answered here.

And while most of you from the Mac forums know this, I need to make it clear here as well: Although I am an HP employee, I am speaking for myself and not for HP.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.5)

Posted on Nov 23, 2010 12:41 PM

150 replies

Nov 27, 2010 12:29 PM in response to HP Mac Architect

OK, one more commonly asked question and answer:

Q: My iOS device sees the printer, but when I hit print, nothing comes out.
A: Restart your Router, your Printer, and your iOS device. Sometimes after updating (in many cases two of the three of them) a clean restart is all it takes to clear things up and get things running properly.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

Dec 1, 2010 2:59 PM in response to HP Mac Architect

Andrew,

You sound like you know what you're talking about. And you're probably the only person who has mentioned anything about setting up bonjour "beyond the local subnet". You mentioned "Wide-Area Bonjour Server setup" which, I believe, uses unicast DNS-SD and does not require broadcast traffic across different subnets). I read a related excerpt on the main www.dns-sd.org page.

"One of easiest applications of Wide-Area DNS-SD is simply to add a few records to your DNS server, to automatically advertise selected services to clients, with zero configuration on the client side"

We are trying to set up printer queues for AirPrint on the enterprise network without network changes allowing broadcasts across subnets. I have two questions that I cannot find any mention of on the Internet.

Does the iOS AirPrint bonjour support only rely on multicast DNS (mDNS) or does it also support use the Unicast DNS-SD standard?

And if it does..

What does an AirPrint compatible DNS-SD record look like?

Thanks,
Farhan

Dec 1, 2010 11:55 PM in response to Farhanible

OK. I found the answer to the first question by running tcpdump. When AirPrint utility is initiated (e.g. via Safari), it tries to locate available printers using multicast mDNS packets ( 10.0.2.2.mdns > 224.0.0.251.mdns). It then tries to locate printers using a unicast DNS query ( 10.0.2.2.53480 > 10.0.2.1.domain)

02:18:22.873996 IP 10.0.2.2.mdns > 224.0.0.251.mdns: 0 [1n] ANY (QU)? XXXX-iPhone.local. (59)
02:18:22.931234 ARP, Request who-has 169.254.255.255 tell 10.0.2.2, length 28
02:18:23.123896 IP 10.0.2.2.mdns > 224.0.0.251.mdns: 0 [1n] ANY (QM)? XXXX-iPhone.local. (59)
02:18:23.332095 ARP, Request who-has 169.254.255.255 tell 10.0.2.2, length 28
02:18:23.410995 IP 10.0.2.2.53480 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 32643+ PTR? b. dns-sd.udp.194.74.122.10.in-addr.arpa. (59)
02:18:23.411247 IP 10.0.2.1.domain > 10.0.2.2.53480: 32643 NXDomain 0/1/0 (136)
02:18:23.411398 IP 10.0.2.2.63837 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 19187+ PTR? db. dns-sd.udp.194.74.122.10.in-addr.arpa. (60)
02:18:23.411569 IP 10.0.2.1.domain > 10.0.2.2.63837: 19187 NXDomain 0/1/0 (137)
02:18:23.411990 IP 10.0.2.2.53527 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 34219+ PTR? r. dns-sd.udp.194.74.122.10.in-addr.arpa. (59)
02:18:23.412104 IP 10.0.2.1.domain > 10.0.2.2.53527: 34219 NXDomain 0/1/0 (136)
02:18:23.413066 IP 10.0.2.2.62020 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 25033+ PTR? dr. dns-sd.udp.194.74.122.10.in-addr.arpa. (60)
02:18:23.413093 IP 10.0.2.2.62730 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 3250+ PTR? lb. dns-sd.udp.194.74.122.10.in-addr.arpa. (60)
02:18:23.413206 IP 10.0.2.1.domain > 10.0.2.2.62020: 25033 NXDomain 0/1/0 (137)
02:18:23.413288 IP 10.0.2.1.domain > 10.0.2.2.62730: 3250 NXDomain 0/1/0 (137)
02:18:23.413451 IP 10.0.2.2.59716 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 153+ TXT? cf. dns-sd.udp.194.74.122.10.in-addr.arpa. (60)
02:18:23.413540 IP 10.0.2.1.domain > 10.0.2.2.59716: 153 NXDomain 0/1/0 (137)
02:18:23.414074 IP 10.0.2.2.53726 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 41547+ PTR? b. dns-sd.udp.0.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa. (54)
02:18:23.414079 IP 10.0.2.2.52551 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 40575+ PTR? db. dns-sd.udp.0.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa. (55)
02:18:23.414081 IP 10.0.2.2.58441 > 10.0.2.1.domain: 17869+ PTR? r. dns-sd.udp.0.2.0.10.in-addr.arpa. (54)

Message was edited by: Farhanible

Dec 2, 2010 5:12 PM in response to Farhanible

Farhan,

You're quickly getting into area's that I can't talk about about. You have clearly answered one question yourself. The question you aren't asking is how do I configure Wide-Area Bonjour on an iOS Devices. Well that one I can answer, see [here|http://www.dns-sd.org/ClientBrowseOnly.html] and [here|http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/tutorial163.html] and you should be able to put two and two together. While the second link does not explicitly talk about Wide-Area Bonjour you should be able to find settings that word for word match the first document. After that, you're going to have to poke around on your own, sorry about that.

And sorry it took me a while to get back to you, I was out of town for a couple of days.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

Joes1712

Level 1

8 points

Dec 2, 2010 8:48 PM in response to HP Mac Architect

Thanks for all your input! I was due for an upgrade to my HP printers anyway and after reading all your input I bought a Photosmart c310a. Got it today, installed without a hitch and am printing from iPad, iPhone and all my Win7 PCs. AirPrint does work!
Joe

Dec 3, 2010 8:52 AM in response to HP Mac Architect

Thanks Andrew. I did quite a bit of reading on the Apple implementation of Bonjour wrt printing ( http://devimages.apple.com/opensource/BonjourPrinting.pdf) and I can now see the print queue on my iOS devices connected to the enterprise wifi without enabling mDNS broadcasts between subnets. We have a very large environment and DNS-SD is the only practical way to allow service discovery across subnets. I just created some DNS records in our MS DNS servers to make this happen. I'll update the this thread when everything's working.

Thanks again,
Farhan

slughand

Level 1

0 points

Dec 3, 2010 8:59 AM in response to HP Mac Architect

Airprint was a much anticipated feature of iOS 4.2 which in my opinion is another epic fail from apple (lack of flash being the other) for iPad/iPhone users. After upgrading I actually see nothing ground breaking in the new OS but it doesn't change my opinion of the iPad, I still love it and use it daily. I just accept it limitations and adjust to them. It's too bad though printing would have been a nice feature.

Dec 4, 2010 4:54 AM in response to HP Mac Architect

HP MA,

Thanks for an awesome and informative post. Downloaded one of the third party apps and within seconds all my printers visible on my iPad, well worth the $10.

Drusus

Level 1

90 points

Dec 5, 2010 12:48 AM in response to slughand

Well I for one am most pleased with both AirPrint, (which works a treat between my iPad and my new HP Photosmart Plus e-all-in one B210a printer) and the new update. Having had my iPad from May, I kept it 3.2 and for my part find the upgrade most gratifying.

The ability to quickly switch between apps, whilst strictly not true multi-tasking, is a big improvement, as well as the very neat way you can now use folders to organise your screen estate. Not to mention the addition of Airplay which is very neatly integrated with the Apple TV, plus numerous other improvements, for me make it a great update, and although I would agree with you about the lack of Flash integration, by and large, the iPad now runs as it should have done when launched.

So it's a big 'thumbs up' from me. 😉

rbii

Level 2

345 points

Dec 9, 2010 11:12 AM in response to Farhanible

For Wide Area Bonjour Only
------
Farhan,

You make have figured this out already, but you can use the Mac dns-sd command line tool to generate the service records for the zone file. If you have an AirPrint capable printer on the local network then:

dns-sd -Z ipp.tcp

will dump the PTR, SRV, and TXT records for the printer. If you update the SRV record with the ultimate FQDN for the printer you should be able to put this right into the zone file for your DNS server.

If I can help please feel to send me e-mail. (rich at rbi.com).

Dec 9, 2010 2:18 PM in response to HP Mac Architect

Q: When will the firmware update for the Officejet's be available?
A: It's available now. Go to the font panel of your device and do the firmware update (assuming your device is connected to the network.

Q: What is the new firmware version?
A: xxxx1048 is the new firmware version that supports AirPrint – LRP1FN1048PR is what the Officejet Pro 8500a is reporting for example.

Just trying to help.

Andrew

Dec 9, 2010 2:33 PM in response to HP Mac Architect

Q: Are there any free ways to get AirPrint working using a Mac as a proxy?
A: Check out [AirPrint Activator|http://netputing.com/airprintactivator]. It was recently updated to not contain any Apple code (and hence the reason I am adding it tom my list). The brings solutions I know about to 3 (2 paid, 1 free). Note that support for any of these solutions will be provided by the vendors of the software, not by Apple or the Printer vendor of the Printer you have.

Note that I still know of no official or supported Windows solutions.

Just trying to help.

Andrew