Brother MFC-J4510DW printer - losing connection

There's hundreds if not thousands of posts on the web in general about Brother printers losing connectivity over wi-fi when they go to sleep. We can print to our Brother printer wirelessly but the wireless part is between the computers and the router. I connect the printer to the router with an Ethernet cable.

I have been trying to find out how to solve this for a week straight. Called Apple twice, first time they said it was a Brother issue (I have the MFC-J885DW) which I didn't believe because after the printer went to sleep I could print from my phone without any issues. I even have a Windows partition on my macbook and I was able to connect to the printer even while it was in sleep mode. Anyways I called Brother and they had me add the printer with the IP number, that worked but then I wasn't able to scan. And I don't know about you but I'd like my things to work they way they are intended to (like Macs staying connected to a printer) Called Apple back and they suggested trying a test user account, then booting into safe mode, then going into recovery. I was not about to do all that. Last night I restarted my printer to make sure it was connected, typed in my printer's IP address in the address bar in Chrome. From here I noticed I could disable airprint and thought I'd give that a try since nothing else was working. I was running the CUPS driver anyways and I feel that airprint may be what is causing this whole mess. Then I noticed that IPv6 was disabled, so I went ahead and enabled it. After changing these settings, the printer restarted and I waited for it to go to sleep and even waited 5 more minutes after that. Opened up printers and scanners and wouldn't you know? That little light was green and the status was idle. Good Lord it was such an amazing feeling. It's been 12 hours and it's still connected. I'm not completely sure what fixed it, either disabling airprint or enabling IPv6, and I don't feel like finding out since its working now. I hope and pray that this helps anybody else with this issue because, believe me, it is frustrating beyond belief!!

I tried everything Brother had suggested and instructed. WiFi connection would still drop after about 5 minutes or so. In addition to coming here, I also had submitted the problem to Brother's site. They suggested that, WiFi setting be Static on the TCP/IP setting rather than "Auto" or "Dynamic".

Upon setting the TCP/IP to Static, the problem went away. The printer stays connected to WiFi.

I hope the foregoing helps.

You choose System Preferences -> Network -> Advanced -> TCP/IP -> Configure IPv4: Manually, and then you will be able to specify a specific IP address for your Mac. The IP address is static, and you configure the Mac 'manually' to use the static IP address.

Bob, when using DHCP the Mac's IP address is 10.0.1.2. Is that the value I would enter manually? Is IPv4 specific to printers/scanners?

After my first post to this discussion I spent some time searching for a possible fix. On two separate forums it was suggested that when using the Brother Airprint driver the connection is lost when the printer goes into sleep mode. Changing the driver to Brother (printer name) CUPS driver fixes the problem. I changed the printer driver to the CUPS option and so far I have been able to print without a problem.

I haven't posted this as a solution yet because I want to be certain that it isn't temporary. One unexpected perk when using the CUPS driver is I gain more printing setting options. They include more paper choices, and resolution settings as well as advanced options such as Toner Save Mode and Improvement Print Output.

There is something odd though. . . When the Brother printer is selected it shows an exclamation mark in a triangle next to the printer name. Normally I would expect this to mean that the printer is not available but it is printing anyway. Might that exclamation mark be a duplicate of the low toner warnings located elsewhere in the dialog window?

Switching from the Airprint driver to the CUPS driver seems to have done the trick! It's February 22 and I have been successfully printing without a single problem. That includes waking the printer from sleep, after computer restarts/shutdowns and powering off/on the printer. I've printed using a variety of apps on two Macs. I haven't had this kind of success printing since I bought the Brother printer late last year.

The fix is to select the Brother CUPS driver instead of the Airprint version when adding the printer to your printers and drivers in System Preferences. I had to do it two different ways on my Mac Mini and MacBook Pro. Both Macs are running OS 10.10.5 but I don't see any reason why this won't work with other operating systems.

Mac Mini

1. Turn off the printer.

2. Delete the printer from your printer list.

3. Turn on the printer and add it to your printers. (If it doesn't show up close the Printers and Scanners window and then reopen it. It should appear in the drop-down menu when you click the "+" button.)

4. You may see a window telling you that the printer software is not available. Click the blue button.

5. The next window will say "Add" at the top. Select the Brother printer if it isn't already highlighted.

6. At the bottom of the Add window click the "Use" button and select Brother (printer name) series CUPS.

7. Click the "Add" button.

On my MacBook Pro Steps 4-7 did not occur. I had to add the printer 3 times before the CUPS driver was automatically added instead of the Airprint driver. I have no idea why that happened. And one would think that the Airprint driver is the one to choose for wireless printing, but apparently not. There can be some mystery/magic involved when dealing with printer drivers and Macs.

Good luck!

Thank you. I found a simpler solution. I sent the Brother back to Amazon, drove to Office Max, and bought an HP printer. Worked fine the first time, has worked fine ever since.

I tried to use this fix for the identical problem with the Brother MFC-J4420DW and using the CUPS driver did not help. Still have to power down the printer and power it back up again to print once it goes to sleep.

Same problem with the same printer, Brother MFC-J4420DW, yet even when the printer disconnects I can still connect to the command center using Safari with the static IP address. And the scanner still works so I know it is still connected. It is only the print function that will no longer work. Cycle the power and I can print again

Looked like a good plan. IPV5 was already enabled on mine so turned off Airport.

the good news: yes, the green idle light stays on.

the bad news: still won't print after it goes to sleep even if I wake it up. I even reset the network connection through the browser, still no-go.

I have a Brother MFC-L27000W that was working fine on my home LAN until I switched from DSL to fixed point wireless. Then it started dropping the connection. My suspicion is the problem has something to do with the router, which is a Lynksys EA4500. I have a range extender on order. I'm hoping that will help.

In trying to solve this problem under Mac OS X 10.11 (El Capitan) with a Brother MFC-J480DW connected to the network via WPS I had tried just about every combination and permutation of suggestions on this page. I landed upon the following solution:

1) Download the "Full Driver & Software Package"

2) Install the driver "Brother MFC-J480DW-CUPS" through the installer for the package mentioned in 1).

3) Use a web browser to go to http://10.0.0.10 (or whatever the IP address of your printer might be)

4) You should see the page heading "Brother MFC-J480DW"

5) Select "IPv6(Wireless)"

6) Select the "Enabled" radio button and check the "Prioritize IPv6 Address" box.

7) You can check if your printer is online by: Apple > System Preferences > Printers & Scanners > [your Brother printer] > Open Print Queue > Printer Settings > Utility > Open Printer Utility. If you see green, you're good to go.

YMMV. Best of luck to you.

Here is what worked for me and my MFC-L2700DW with OS 10.10.5

From the Brother menu:

Network/WLAN/TCP/IP: BootMethod = Static; IPAddr=10.0.0.110.

The printer already knew about our Wi-Fi.

After several print/scan/shutdown/powerup/print/scan and several Sleep periods of both devices and the Macbook Pro on the same Wi-Fi, no problems.

MacOS Sierra and IOS 10.0.2 with a Brother DCP-L2540DW printer...

I changed network to STATIC in the printer's web control panel but that did not help. The printer always had a static on the wireless network. Connecting via wired network is not practical due to it's location in the room.

Tried latest Brother printer driver from late Sep2016 and no help.

Once the printer would go into sleep mode, it was no longer visible on the Mac for CUPS... nor IOS devices for AirPrint.

Later I enabled IPV6 through the printer's web control panel. Seems to remain visible after that point... so far.

I left AirPrint enabled as that is sometimes used by IOS devices here.

I have struggled with this for months on end (and had my printer replaced). Here's what I've found to work:

1. Install Brother drivers first.

2. When adding the printer in System Preferences > Printers and Scanners, do not install Airprint (I found an obscure note buried in Brother support pages stating it reduces functionality). On the "Use" pull-down, select CUPS.

3. Set a static IP address.