We had a small 8-port Cisco switch in one school with two devices connected to it, and swapped it out for an Airport Extreme, both to reuse the Cisco device and to improve the wireless connectivity in that area.
One of the devices plugged into the Airport is a Canon imageRUNNER 8500 photocopier. As I understand it (I haven't been on site since swapping the switch):
- the copier works fine when plugged directly into the network (and power cycled, if needs be)
- the copier does not work when plugged into the Airport Extreme (even after power cycling)
- other devices will work off of the Airport Extreme's LAN ports without problems
- I really need to verify this, but I was told that if the copier is plugged directly into the wall, power cycled, and then plugged into the Airport, it works (until the copier restarts the next day after going to sleep)
The copier tech thought it might be something to do with the ethernet speed setting. The copier will support 100 MB/s and 10 MB/s, and the Airport should support both of those and 1000 MB/s. The problem may be as simple as the two not negotiating a speed properly.
Looking in the Airport Utility, I see settings to force the speed on the WAN port, but not any of the LAN ports. Is it possible to force the speed on a LAN port? (Is the underlying issue likely to be something else?)
Best Answer
It is quite possible that there is a problem with autonegotiation - that's definitely one of the things I would look at, unfortunately I don't know enough about the airport to know if it's capable of that.