i have this printer, a old samsung wireless laser printer
i use it wireless, not via usb, after i upgraded the router to openwrt it worked just fine
on another post, it was mentioned the wireless security, wpa in particular, how one should not be on wpa2, but should be on wpa3
most of my devices are capable of wpa3, my smartphones, tablets, the pcs, so i moved the wifi signals from wpa2 to wpa3, no problem
well, no problem, until i turned on my printer this morning, and found it to be missing from the network
i turned it on and off a couple times and when i tried to enter the ip it has, it was missing, i looked for it on the devices connected on the router and it wasnt there
then i remembered the situation with the wpa, and realized this old printer from like 2012 doesnt know what wpa3 is
i disabled wpa3 and went back to wpa2 in the 2.4ghz network, because this old printer only can with b g n networks
still couldnt see it
the printer has two ways to be configured, a wifi direct connection and usb via a program offered by hp(samsung no longer sells printers or offer support and sold the business to hp in like 2015 more or less)
i had to turn on my old windows pc, to run the tool because wifi direct, i forgot the password to connect to the wifi printer signal
in the pc i could manage to run the configuration tool via usb cable, then adding back the wifi signal that the printer refused to accept in a wpa2 and wpa3 compatibility version
finally printer was connected, but i couldnt enter in its ip configuration page on the web browser, the one is set manually for it, i went back and checked the printer in the list of devices connected and it was using a different ip, i tried to enter in that ip but i couldnt enter, like it wasnt there
i tried other tricks like turn it off, access the wifi configuration tool, printer refused to load the page or print, i was checking other things and decided to assign a static ip on the router, i set the printer to demand for a ip, years ago, and it worked just fine this way for well over a decade
i had to do other things, then came back tried other settings on the wifi signal, on the dhcp, finally the printer was visible
i could access to it and checked the ip, it had changed settings from the static ip to dhcp, no idea why, perhaps when it couldnt connect, it felt like it should do that and refused to work properly after that
i had to set the dhcp to off in the printer, enable the same old static ip, and then checked in openwrt that it still leases that ip for a infinite period of time
i feel like both the printer and openwrt decided to make a tantrum there, because if i give openwrt the order to lease a specific ip to a specific machine and i turn on and off a printer, the printer should follow orders asap, but both made me fight for the result
i make this post to let people know that printers can be problematic and it is not always the problem of your network equipment when something happens, often is your own fault
printers came from hell to make us suffer