Connecting Lexmark Printer to WRT54G

[JoshC]

A while ago I bought a Lexmark MX700 to put in the family room. It has an ethernet port so I figured it could be shared by a laptop, the PC in the family room, and 2 other PC's in other rooms. I have a Dreytek Vigor 2500 ADSL Modem/Router with port 1 connected to the "Internet" port on the Linksys WRT54G. Also connected to the Dreytek on ports 2 and 3 are the 2 PC's in other rooms. The laptop is wirelessly connected to the WRT54G. The familyroom PC is connected to port 1 on the WRT54G and the Lexmark printer is hooked to port 2.

I have no Internet connection problems with the computers when they are hooked directly to the Dreytek, but when connected to the WRT54G the connections keep getting interupted.

Also, my biggest problem is I am not able to connect to the Lexmark printer. I went through the whole Lexmark step by step network setup CD and it said it said the install was successful, but when I try to print through the ethernet connection (familyroom computer to WRT54G to printer) it says the printer is offline. I reinstalled the software using the USB connection and it works fine, but can only be connected to the familyroom computer.

Any help would be appreciated. I am completely dumb when it comes to networking.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

If your modem is a modem/router, than you will want to connect it to a LAN port on the Linksys, NOT the internet port. Also, I would suggest that you get into the config on the Linksys and disable DHCP on that router, it is NOT good to have 2 different DHCP servers on the same LAN.

 

[JoshC]

Thanks, I just went by what Linksys told me when setting it up. Of course it was somebody that "no speak English very well" so that didn't help any. I'll give that a try and see if it fixes any problems.

 

[Ethereal_Dragon]

The WAN or INTERNET port on the router would be used if you only have a broadband modem. But since in your case, the modem is a combo modem/router, you would just use a LAN port on the Linksys. In my setup, I have a DSL modem with 1 RJ-45 port, and that connect to my WAN port on my D-Link WBR-2310 router.

 

[PRVRT]

I have somewhat the same problem running the Linksys WRT54GSV4. I am running 4 pc's and a Dell Laser. Here is the problem I have noticed. With DHCP enabled it auto assigns ip addresses to my pc's and printer so they change depending on which order they are turned on and assigned. Since the printer is setup with a specified ip address in the printer, if I turn off the printer and the pc's and restart them, the addresses change and are assigned in the order they connect to the router which is usally different than the ip on the printer, and then I can no longer access the printer. This sounds like the same problem JoshC is having with his printer, the router is assigning a different IP address than the printer was setup with. What is the best way to do this? Disable DHCP and manually assign IP addresses to the printer and pc's? Or use Mac addressing?