[drewprops]

This is a dumb networking question, but I'd like to understand why I can't print via ethernet to a printer on my home network, but as soon as I turn on Wi-Fi it works. I finally had time to grab this question out of my brain and slam it down somewhere. I will try to look it up myself, but some of y'all may make it easier to understand than me slogging through videos and ad-infested faux tech articles.



...

[_Ω_]

Because printers are evil things that follow no discernible logic.

Printer sharing turned on?

[Brad]

I've also seen where some wifi routers will put the wireless addresses and wired addresses on different subnets, and that can cause "auto discovery" services like Bonjour to not find or be found by other devices.

Unfortunately, I haven't encountered that situation in a while, and potential fixes vary wildly by circumstance and hardware.

Are you able to get the wired IP address of the printer? Are you plugging that into the Printers & Scanners list in System Preferences? Or have you always let it auto detect?

[drewprops]

Urg. First of all, let's not go much further down this road because it really does work with wireless, so I can get by.

Having said that, it's a Brother laser printer and I think it's doing what Brad mentioned.

Peeking into the machine via its utility I see that it has different MAC addresses for wireless and wired.

Looking at the list of devices on my network via my router, the printer only appears once and fascinatingly, the hardware address seen by the router is the MAC address associated with the printer's wired setup.

Looking in the Printer Utility, there is no IP specified, so it's probably on auto-discovery?

I feel like I need to shiver uncontrollably and run around flinging my hands in front of me, like I just escaped the hotel from The Shining.