Wireless Access

We are currently in the process of implementing a printing solution called Ricoh EveryonePrint for our mobile devices.

 

Basically this is a piece of software which runs on a Windows machine and advertises itself as an AirPrint capable printer using Bonjour mDNS messages. It fits nicely into our Ricoh enterprise printing environment.

 

In a proof of concept I had it running on a laptop which was connected to the Wireless network. Because of that the Aruba controller was able to determine its capabilities (AirPrint).

 

My question now is whether it is possible to have the Windows machine connect to the network using a LAN cable and not through WiFi? How Do I tell the Aruba controller that there is a AirPrint capable device out there without the device being connected through WiFI?

The controller needs to be able to see the wired mDNS traffic;  typically the particular VLAN is added to a trunk port on the controller.

 

 

Also, if your switch supports GRE tunnels, you can create a tunnel between the switch and your controller and only redirect mDNS and SSDP packets through the tunnel up to the controller.

I hooked up an AirPrint capable Brother 9330CDW to the wired network and configured the printer's LAN port into a VLAN that is also present on a trunk port on the controller.

 

I registered the printer's MAC address on ClearPass and was able to print from an iPhone!

 

That is the good part... now for the not so good part...

 

After a few minutes the printer won't show up on the iPhone. I suppose this is due to some kind of timeout. I set the sleep timer on the printer to its maximum (50 minutes) but this didn't change anything.

 

Does anyone else see this behaviour as well?

Any update on this? We're trying to set up a very similar system (Uniflow, by Canon) and are seeing similar behavior. We're actually doing AD authenitcation with the AirPrint server, but it works inconsistently and of course support is blaming Aruba/ClearPass.

You may want to create a static AirGroup service record on the controller.

Sorry, I forgot to mention we are using ClearPass as well. We have 50+ AppleTVs that work quite well, but this is the first printer we've added and it's giving us trouble. We're running 6.3.1.8 on the controller and 6.3.4 on the ClearPass VM.

I have two customers who have experienced similar problems with the "controller" still seing the wired print server, but the client device (iPad, etc.) not being able to see/print to it.

 

They're running Printopia on a wired server, and the issue was resolved by following this article:

 

http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Controller-Based-WLANs/Why-do-iphones-ipads-unable-to-discover-wired-airprint-or/ta-p/184774

 

I would recommend doing some testing before turning drop bc/mc off. You may start to see performance issues.