I'm having trouble getting my Brother printer to work on my network with a somewhat unusual setup: I'm using a 192.168.200.0/22 subnet, meaning the range of IP addresses goes from 192.168.200.0 to 192.168.203.255. Everything prints just fine from all my Windows machines, except for the IP addresses 192.168.200.255, 192.168.201.255, and 192.168.202.255. I understand that 192.168.203.255 is a broadcast address, but the other three shouldn't be. I can ping the printer at those addresses, but I can't print or access the web interface. Has anyone else run into this issue with Brother printers? Am I being unreasonable by using non-standard addresses? I've tried two different Brother printers, the HL-L5200DW and the HL-L5210DN, and the SHARP printer on the same network works perfectly. The easy fix is to configure my DHCP to avoid those addresses, but I'm curious if others have experienced similar issues. As a side note, I've reached out to Brother support and will update if I hear back.
4 Answers
Have you checked if the subnet mask on the printer is set up correctly? That might be the culprit. Sometimes manufacturers assume everyone is using a /24 and can't handle anything different. I've seen that happen way too often.
Right? And another possibility could be an outdated firmware that’s just not up to modern networking standards.
Our network team made a similar decision to reserve .0 and .255 for DHCP because too many devices have issues with those addresses. Losing a few IPs in the range is worth it to avoid those headaches. It's probably a smart move to do the same since printers seem to have many network bugs.
So true, it's just safer to avoid them altogether unless you want random issues cropping up.
Exactly! Better safe than sorry, especially in networking.
This kind of stuff happens with printers that have poorly designed IP stacks. They often don't understand different subnet setups and will act up with addresses like .255. It's usually a good idea to reserve those problematic addresses and keep things running smoothly.
Definitely! Just move those addresses out of your pool – it's the smart choice.
From my experience, it’s always safer to stick with trusted ranges that avoid these quirks.
It sounds like the problem might be the printer's firmware or its configuration. It could be mistakenly treating the .255 addresses as broadcast, which wouldn't surprise me given some of the quirks I've seen with Brother devices. They have a reputation for having certain addresses hardcoded to avoid, probably due to how their IP stack is implemented.
Haha, brooooo other brands have their quirks too! Just makes you wonder how some manufacturers handle their device software, huh? My old printers raised some hilarious issues before.
Totally agree! It’s not just Brother; sometimes manufacturers just don't keep up with the standards.
Good thought! You might want to double-check. If it's not that, then it might just be that the firmware doesn't play nice with your network settings.