Let me begin by wishing everyone a Happy Thanksgiving!

Now, I just acquired an open box Airport Extreme base station. I was really excited about all the possibilities. Little did I know I would have so many issues trying to get it configured! (I had less trouble configuring my Linksys wireless broadband router.) The key adjustment came when I manually set the Airport Extreme to Channel 11. (I think I read that somewhere.)

Anyway, after more than 2 hours of changing settings, my computers are all on the Internet and communicating wirelessly. Here is the last issue. I can't seem to find a way to configure the AEBS to work properly with my Dell 3100cn color laser printer. I go to ad the printer using the system preferences on my MacBook as an IP printer using LPD protocol like I've done in the past. I manually print a "printer settings" report on the Dell to get its IP address and I find that it still has the IP assisgned by the Linksys router. I tried using that address but all attempts to print come up with a communications error.

Is there a setting for AEBS that I need to change in the AE Utility to make it communicate with the Dell? If not, anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Michael

Michael,

Unusual. Airport Base Stations are considered some of the easiest to configure routers on the market. The first thing I can tell you is that the 3100CN is not compatible with the Mac, at least based on the information I found on Dell's web site. But, it is a postscript laser printer.

I'm guessing you need to print out a test/configuration page and confirm the IP address you're using is the correct address.

Here are some links that might help:

[www.askdavetaylor.com]

[its.unm.edu]

I'm 99.9% positive that this is a computer printer configuration problem and not an issue Airport Extreme Base Station issue.

Robert

Robert,

I used my Dell 3100cn with a Linksys wireless broadband router for nearly three years. The Dell is indeed Mac compatible. It's just that Dell has absolutely no support for the Mac.

What seems to be occuring is that the AEBS is not communicating with the Dell and, therefore, the IP address is not being set by the AEBS DHCP server. (As I state above, the Dell still shows the address set by the Linksys.)

As for my AEBS, I had to power it down several times and reset it several times before everything worked right. The key was setting the Channel to 11 manually. Until then, I could never connect to the Internet. After setting it manually on my Ethernet connected Mac, I then couldn't get the wireless signal recognized by the Airport enabled Macs. Finally, I reset the AEBS one last time and reconfigured everything, including manually selecting the channel, and the wireless signal was restored.

I'm sure I created a lot of my own problems with the AEBS but it wasn't completely clear-cut.

Now, if I can only get my Dell printer going!

Michael

Eureka! I finally got it to work. The one thing I had not done was to restart my Dell 3100cn. When I did that and printed out the settings report, I now had a new IP address for it. I added the printer in the system preferences, typed in the new IP address and it worked!

Michael

Magic,

Glad to hear you got it working! You'd be amazed at how often a simple restart can solve problems. Sounds like doing that gave the router a reason to give the printer a new IP address.

Robert