I have some printers that are connected to the current FieldsNet configuration via the HP JetAdmin product. These printers are not tied to any specific PC and are accessible from Windows, Mac OSX, and Ubuntu.
All has been well for several years until recently. I'm not sure if it was the multitude of Windows security updates, the crashing of my previous router, or what, but no machine could access these printers over the network. I have a single server that has a direct connection to one of the laser printers and it is obvious that the printer is perfect working condition.
I have periodically worked on this issue in my spare time. I have tried to access the printers by their IP address and by their hardware address. I have fiddled with the many firewalls on the network. I have tried to adjust settings on the new router. Nothing seemed to work.
At best I could narrow the problem down to the IP addresses of the printers. They are set to the default IP addresses given to them when I bought them. For example, one of the IP addresses was 169.254.207.104 and my internal network is the subnet of 192.168.0.xxx. How they ever communicated is beyond me at this point, which is probably why I could not resolve the problem.
Well today, I was reading through the documentation on one the laser printers, an HP 4050n, and found that the IP address was a default and could be changed to what ever IP address I desired! So using the documentation as a guide I changed the IP address of the 4050 to 192.168.0.199 and then attempted to connect to it from my Windows machine. The network installation wizard auto-detected the printer, installed the drivers, and worked like a charm. I performed the same process to the other printer and I then went around to all of the other machines and re-initialized the printers.
I am now back in business with my networked printers.