Brother MFC-J4510DW printer - losing connection

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

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!!

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.

Thanks for the info, tried this today on a Brother MFC-J4420DW. No luck.

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.

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.

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.

The Airprint-Disabled, IPv6-Enabled combination did the trick for me, printer was showing as idle but wasn't printing, mine is a MFC-J480DW.

Thank you.

You can achieve the same effect by configuring your DHCP server (probably your router) to hand back a statically assigned IP address to the printer, so that it always gets the same address.

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.

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.

Truly annoying... having the same problem... and I often have to print stuff fast on the clock... i set to static... that didnt help as it didnt work this morning....

It was caught up "looking for printer" this morning... one thing was that the printer was connected to my second band of my router while my computer was connected to my first... or the other way around.. really shouldn't matter but when i connected my computer to the same band of wifi it immediately saw the printer and printed the page from 20 minutes earlier...

fingers crossed...