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[Weaver]

Mrs Weaver has had an epson printer-scanner thingummy for a good while which came advertised as 'airprint compatible' which is why she bought it.

It works most of the time, but today neither Mrs Weaver or I could see the device listed in the standard Apple UI in various apps on two iPads. It was however, up, pingable and alive because I could talk to it's admin http server, and I could actually print a test page using one particular special app that I found which prints directly to a chosen ipv4 address using <?>-printing-application-layer-protocol (?ipp ?port9100). (Readdle Printer Pro.)

Just wasted some time with an extremely thick and unpleasant bio-robot on epsom's web chat service who refused to debug the issue and just told me i had to download some app that i've never heard of and which i neither want not need. Anyone ever heard of 'i-print' or 'iPrint'? It seems to be some epson ios app. I don't know why it should work sometimes or not others. If they were too lazy to support Apple's standard protocols at all then I could understand that (some programmers are bone idle) but then it just wouldn't work at all or only with the one special sacred app and would presumably have very few sales or a lot of furious conned customers on day one.

Anyone had a disappearing reappearing ios printer?

[Weaver]

[Moderator edited two merge the two threads.]

Have spent the entire afternoon first asking to unpleasant epson bio-robots, then transferred to Apple lovely friendly people who actually can be bothered, like going from winter to summer.

It has all got sooo weird now.

I can't 'see' this epson wireless printer from the standard ios printer selection ui, it just says no airprint printer found. But I can ping the printer, speak http to it, and even print [!] to it, but only by using a special third party app (as a test) that goes directly to a given ipv4 address entered manually, so no 'discovery'.

And even power cycling the printer didn't fix the problem, nor did rebooting my ipad; it is still 'ui-invisible' from two ipads even though I tried various different apps on them too, and all the while I can speak IP to the printer successfully.

So it can't be a bug in the printer where it corrupts its own state after so long or so many activity cycles, because power-cycle didn't fix it. Nor is it a state bug in my ipad, two ipads, and a reboot didn't fix it.

It has all in fact got tooo weird. There is actually no indication that it is anything to do with printing at all. IP does work to the device, that we do know, but some of the other stuff in the Apple protocol stacks related to printer discovery are not happy, but we have no way of finding out why they choose to say “No Airprint printers found”. So I'm not even sure I can shout at Epson, mind you their kit does lose some, but not all, of the settings every time there is a power cut. (Loses the WPA2 password.)

Apple were on on internet chat and then on phone for hours, escalated me three times and then that now means someone will talk to me next week. Thank god I get free support from them (I paid up front for a support contract).

[sevenlayermuddle]

Sorry Weaver, didn’t notice this and other recent printer threads.

As mentioned in a different printer thread, I have never actually used Airprint, but I am suspicious of its adequacy.   In my case, it would be for printing from a Mac PC, as well as the iPad etc.

I have heard convincing rumours that not all routers are compatible with Apple’s Bonjour protocol.  I have failed to find a detailed explanation of what that incompatibility might be.   But allowing for the fact I am in no position to judge technical merit,  this very brief Q&A may shed some light, suggesting it is just common bugs in router multicast handling...

https://superuser.com/questions/1238812/how-to-check-if-a-router-support-bonjour-protocol

PS:  I also found a thread on a Billion forum where several contributors described haphazard operation of Airprint similar to yours.   The general assertion was that it worked fine with  other routers.

[Weaver]

Well the router can't be involved, it has nothing to do with traffic in the lan (domestic users usually conflate the word router with wireless access point since they are only familiar with single-box combined solutions.) I don't need the Firebrick router to be turned on for the LAN to operate correctly of course.

That post says something about bugs in _waps_ though, to do with the handling of multicast. Now that I can believe. I suspect it might have worked before I had two access points possibly but if there are any bugs in the ZyXel WAPs handling of multicast maybe it is not forwarding frames as it should onto the rest of the wired LAN. I have my suspicions as to whether Bonjour works at all with multiple ZyXel APs.

Very valuable post, has set me thinking. Many thanks.