Pixma MG8220 always offline

[drdabrown]

The Pima MG8220 has been a grfeat printer except that it is always offline when I try to print from the laptop or a mobile device.

I've set it up wireless and if I have been printing and the printer is active, it works fine, however, if it hs been sitting for awhile and the screen is off (but the wireless light lit), the printer is offline and continues to stay so until I shut it off and restart it. It then works wirelessly.

Is there a setting that I can select that I am able to select to enable the printer to be awaken with print request from the laptop?

Thank you.

My first post to this forum.

David Brown

[shadowsports]

Hi David,

Whats likely happening.  2 usual senarios.

You restart the printer, it queries the router for an IP.  You print, good.

Now the printer gets turned off, goes to slepp or doesn't get used for a while.  Your router does not "hear from" or communicate with the printer for a period of time.  It assumes the device is no longer on your network and reclaims its IP for the next device that connects and asks for an IP address. 

Or, the ARP table in the router is not maintained and the last known IP for the device is not remembered.

The result, you send a print job to the idle or sleeping printer and the router doesn't know where to send the job, or sends it to the last known IP of the device which is no long available or valid.  Printing fails.

Here's how to fix it.  Give the printer a static or reserved IP address.  The router will never give this IP to another device and any device on the network (wired or wireless) will always be able to "find" the printer (regardless of when it was last used, turned on, etc.) because its IP will never change.

How you do this depends on your router.  Brand/Model..  but you can easily reserve an IP by the printer's MAC address or assign a static IP which is above or below the range (pool) of IP addresses the router hands out to devices connecting to your network. 

By default all consumer routers are set to use all of the available IPs in the DHCP pool. 

Example:

Routers IP on LAN: 192.168.1.1

DHCP Pool: 192.168.1.2 ~.254

I limit my pool to 192.168.1.100 ~ .150, leaving me ranges of IPs above and below the pool of addresses the router uses for devices that "come and go" from my network.  My printer is assigned 192.168.1.99.  Never changes.