Apple airport extreme & network printing

[Sephiroth]

People might be interested to know how I successfully connected my ethernet printer to the Airport Extreme (AE) environment.

The perceived problem was that Apple do nothing to cover this scenario, expecting you in their documentation to connect your printer to the AE's USB port - never mind that the printer could well be in a different room.

Previous environment

Cable Modem -> Draytek 2910 -> Ethernet -> Powerline -> Ethernet -> Switch -> Printer & other devices

I set the printer up with a static IP address in the Draytek (192.168.1.17) so that if the router was reset, existing printer connxions would not be lost.

The Draytek 2910 didn't have the legs to deliver 50 Mbps over the LAN.


Current environment

Cable Modem -> Airport Extreme -> Ethernet -> Powerline -> Ethernet -> Switch -> Printer & other devices

The AE was previously in the default DHCP/gateway/ mode of 10.0.1.1. I used the Airport Utility to change the gateway to 192.168.1.1. On PCs that were currently connected to the router, I had to do REPAIR on the network interface so it could discover 192.168.1.1.

I went onto the printer's own menu (via the LCD panel) and changed the printer's IP address from the Microsoft served 169.xx to 192.168.1.17 and the Gateway from the null 0.0.0.0 to 192.168.1.1.

Onb my PC, I went into the printer properties and immediately the printer test page came out.

Simples.