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Mac cannot ping printer on network?

I don't work with macs much, even called up a friend who runs a business maintaining macs for other businesses, he was stumped.

Have an older Xerox 4500N printer connected to the network. The mac computers on the network cannot find the Xerox. Every Windows machine sees the Xerox. Every Windows machine can ping the ip address of the Xerox. Every Windows machine can access the printer's web interface.

But none of the macs can. They can access everything else on the network. But not this Xerox.

The macs cannot even ping the Xerox. They ping everything else, including the devices on the same switch as this printer. None of the macs can access the web interface either, either with Safari or with Chrome, the browser just stalls out trying to connect.

Even my iphone cannot access the printer's web interface.


I am at a total loss at what to do to get these networked together. Or even how to explain why it's not working to the business.

Anyone know of any possible explanation for this? Thanks
 
Try adding the printer to one of the Macs as an IP device, just to see if they really can't connect to it at all. It's also possible that printer isn't compatible with the MacOS version(s) being used.

To add the printer manually as an IP printer:
System Preferences
Print & Scan
Press + symbol at the bottom of the box on the left
Click IP
Add the IP address of the printer (you will need the printer's utilities to supply the IP address)
 
I don't work with macs much, even called up a friend who runs a business maintaining macs for other businesses, he was stumped.

Have an older Xerox 4500N printer connected to the network. The mac computers on the network cannot find the Xerox. Every Windows machine sees the Xerox. Every Windows machine can ping the ip address of the Xerox. Every Windows machine can access the printer's web interface.

But none of the macs can. They can access everything else on the network. But not this Xerox.

The macs cannot even ping the Xerox. They ping everything else, including the devices on the same switch as this printer. None of the macs can access the web interface either, either with Safari or with Chrome, the browser just stalls out trying to connect.

Even my iphone cannot access the printer's web interface.


I am at a total loss at what to do to get these networked together. Or even how to explain why it's not working to the business.

Anyone know of any possible explanation for this? Thanks

Weird.

Perhaps this printer is sending out malformed IP packets (bad checksum or something). Windows is completely ignorant to this sort of thing, but maybe the Mach Kernel in OSX and iOS does some checking, or throws out packets with some bad flag.

The fact that OSX and iOS use a similar network stack makes me think it's more than just random. 🙂

Can you put Wireshark on one of them and cap some packets? Filter by the printer's source address and see if you're getting return packets.

Try the same on Windows
 
If a Mac doesn't have the print driver built in it's a PITA.

There are work-arounds. Some third parties have ported drivers and the like. I don't have experience with your Xerox.
 
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