Why does my Samsung printer "go offline"

Geez, I seem to be the printer group "question of the day" guy.

My laser is a Samsung 2150, which is network-ready and I use it
connected directly to a network hub. Almost 100% of the time, it
works exactly as a printer should work. It hardly ever jams!

But I said "almost" because every so often, a print job can't find the
printer. I check the printer and the ONLINE light is on. But if I
use the Samsung SyncThru utility, it doesn't detect the printer. This
happens on two different systems.

I find that if I power-cycle the printer, everything works fine again.
But I worry. Is a part failing on me? Is there some way that I can
do a "soft reset" from the printer's control panel?

Thanks again.

Hi!

> I find that if I power-cycle the printer, everything works fine again.
> But I worry. Is a part failing on me? Is there some way that I can
> do a "soft reset" from the printer's control panel?

The Samsung print servers (at least the one in my CLP-550n) have built in
web pages. What happens if you key in the server's IP address into your web
browser? Do you get anything?

I would also check that your computer is printing to the printer's IP
address and not its hostname or network name. It seems as though printing by
network name can be less than reliable.

If you don't get anything out of the printer's network interface when
contacting it with a web browser, I'd start to suspect that the printer is
not working right. You might also check to see if the printer's IP address
is statically or dynamically assigned. If statically assigned, some device
on the network that gets its IP address from a DHCP server may be stomping
on the printer's IP address. It's possible (although somewhat unlikely) that
the print server may just crash or become inaccessible as a result.

William