Re: Printer Problems on Catalyst 35xx XL

d.rein · ‎05-13-2003

Hi,

we use a separate printer Vlan on our campus. Several times it occurs, that

printers on one catalyst 35xx XL aren't working in this vlan, but on other switches (Cat2950 3550..) the printer will work.

What we can determine is, that printers which are not working will not response to an icmp packet larger then 1470 Bytes, working printers will response to the request.

It's strange, that this occurs not on the whole vlan, it occurs only at one switch.

Clients on the other Vlans are not affected. If you connect a Client to the Printer Vlan everthing works fine.

The ports connected to the printer have no errors.

What we are trying now is to set the speed and duplex mode manually at both sides.

Have anybody else seen such strange problems?

larrydbrown · ‎05-13-2003

Yes. Are these hp laserjets w/ 10 half cards in them?

d.rein · ‎05-13-2003

No, Lexmark Printer w/ 10/100 cards.

On Cat 2950 we haven't this problem up to now.

How did you solve the problem?

Thanks in advance,

Dirk

rjackson · ‎05-13-2003

What protocol are you using? If the printers are suppossed to get addresses as they power up you need to enable port fast.

The oversized packet issue may be related. But do these printers always fail or just when fragmented packets come at them? Try pinging the pc in the same vlan with the large packets. If it fails then you need to track down where the ip fragments are being dropped.

d.rein · ‎05-13-2003

We are using TCP/IP. Port fast is enabled. If we connect a PC to the same vlan pinging works fine.

We sniffered the Printer Port and saw the icmp packets arrived at the printer

but no icmp replay came back.

We replaced the switch with another Cat 3548XL and the printer are working, switching the printer back to the other switch - no working.

If the switch has a hardware defect the other clients should also affected, but they are not.

if the lexmark printer has a hardware defect it should not work on another switch, but it does.

Its strange isn't it?

I will look at the lexmark home page for known bugs.

netops01 · ‎05-13-2003

Hi

I have had a similar problem to yours. I got rid of it by reloading the IOS to the problem switches, copied from a working switch. Also set speed/duplex at switch and printer. Been OK for 14 months now. Hope this helps.

Ian