How to Make iPad Printing Available Across Subnets

[des000]

I'm now running IOS 11, on an IPad. I believe it is an IPad mini. I know that in general, the printing works fine, or at least it did with the older OS, so it should with the newer OS.

However, I think I have remembered that it never worked at my own home. I really was trying to get some work done by printing, when I remembered that. The printer has bonjour enabled. Basically, for the ipad's sake to begin with, I had put back up 3 routers again, like I used to have. I have mainrouter, which is connected to the Internet. Then I have clientrouter and guestrouter. guestrouter is for guests, and doesn't come into play here.

clientrouter is pretty much for all clients, or their main job is to be a client in the network. mainrouter is pretty much for the basics of the network, which mostly includes servers. I had to have clientrouter run 2 wireless networks as well, to make things work. It runs the main SMILEY-CLIENTS network, and the SMILEY-CLIENTS-IPADS network. The later is what most apple devices that are not guests run off of. So far, it's pretty much IOS devices that are apple based, both ipods and ipads.

clientrouer and guestrouer do have NAT as well, because I don't know how to make it work without NAT. All 3 are running DD-WRT. So I pretty much need to know exactly what ports to open up and what configuration in clientrouter to poke the bonjour stuff through from mainrouter to clientrouter. Otherwise, whatever protocols to poke through. Or I need to know if it is a bit more than this I need to do, what it would take for the simplest, cheapest, and probably open source solution to getting printing to work on ipad.

Thanks!

 

[RoCutler]

Re: How to Make IPad Printing Available Accross Subnets

Bonjour does not work with different subnets, as Bonjour is a Zero Config protocol and uses multicast.
If the routing is right and your ipad can see the mainrouter ip address range, then Readdles Printer Pro is great for linking with a printer via IP.
Why not move the printer to the clientrouter ip range?

 

[des000]

Re: How to Make IPad Printing Available Accross Subnets

It can't move to the clientrouter ip range, because I can only have one printer and basically, it needs to be shared with servers and everything right now.

I did not know about Readdles Printer Pro, but I found that my printer makes an app that will enable it to print. Because it's not quite as easy, I want to troubleshoot/learn some more before deciding to go with that as the only possible solution.

My devices can see the lower range, but unless I open it up, not everything on the higher range can be seen. I did have to manually add the ip of the printer for it to work with the app.

So what about this then? What if I got it working without NAT, if this is possible? I don't know how to do it, but maybe you could point me in the right direction. mainrouter needs NAT always, basically, because it's directly connected to the ISP cable modem. But there's no reason that I have to have NAT (that I know of), on the other two routers, if I could make it work without NAT.

All 3 are running DD-WRT. First I want to get it working on clientrouter, before I get it working on guestrouter.

Is no NAT an option, for two physical routers or more? I DO want clientrouter and guestrouter to have their own subnet, but that doesn't mean that they have to necessarily have NAT. I'll look on my own for now, but perhaps if I don't find anything, you could help me try to see if that would make the difference, or if there was a way to "tweak" the firewall from the router's command line to allow the packets through, whether or not that meant no NAT. Also, as long as there is a firewall on mainrouter, I don't really need a firewall on either other router, except for the ability to do blocking and stuff if that will work at all.

 

[doogald]

Re: How to Make IPad Printing Available Accross Subnets

Instead of “clientrouter”being a router, why not just make it a switch and have it on the same subnet as the main router? Why are you trying to segregate clients from your servers? I understand isolating guests, but I’m not sure I get why you want three segments like that?

 

[des000]

Re: How to Make IPad Printing Available Accross Subnets

I don't want to get rid of clientrouter completely, just yet. I need different wireless networks for this to work. I really would, for now, prefer to have servers and clients in their own ip range. However, "possibly", if I could get rid of the NAT, that would be great.

In a perfect world, I would have a printer on each subnet, and stuff like that, but I can't do that right now. Besides, I want printing to work for guests if they need to too.

 

[des000]

Re: How to Make IPad Printing Available Accross Subnets

Part of the reason, I want multiple physical routers, is because I want to have it easy to set things up. I really don't care though, whether or not there happens to be a subnet between things or something like that though.

By easy to set things up, I mean that to add a new subnet, I configure a new router most of the time. That's what I mean by that. And if you "could" make wireless networks have their own DHCP server and ip range, on dd-wrt, I'd possibly do that, but since you can't, this is pretty much the best solution.

Certain areas have wired, but there's wireless in the network too. There should be wireless that reaches everywhere. Then there should be some select wires there. That's part of the basics to making things work in my network. The wired areas allow me to connect with some versions of Linux, that don't support my wireless cards or anything. The wireless is typically used, once a thing is set up and stuff, but the wires may still be used too. Hope some of this makes sense to you!

 

[doogald]

It doesn’t make sense. The only reason I can think to segment a network like that is to protect some devices from others. Many people create specific subnets for iot devices, for example, since many of them have become hijackable and make the network vulnerable. It’s been a while since I’ve used dd-wrt, but, it seems to me any good WiFi router is capable of being put into bridge mode, so it provides WiFi connectivity within the parent network's subnet, but if dd-wrt cannot do that, then why not use the native router firmware? At the very least, if you plug ethernet into one of the router's Ethernet ports rather than the wan port, the router should act as a switch rather than a router and can participate in the gateway router’s network.

So, I’m trying to figure out why you want to segregate clients from servers. Guests I understand, as I said , I can understand something like internet of things devices like thermostats and lightbulbs, but is there a security requirement to have the servers segregated from the clients?

 

[des000]

Basically, it was just hard enough to get the apple devices working as much as they are now. I "might" have been able to do it another way, and have them work the way I wanted, but it was so hard to figure out for me, that I want to make small changes, so that I know I don't break things, I don' t want to make big changes until I have to again.

DD-WRT is more powerful than any of the software the routers come with, at the current time, at the store I bought it at, which has the monopoly in town (Fred Meyers). Sure, I could buy a router online, and it might be good enough, but that takes shipping and everything. Plus, I don't want to go into what I call, "Router Hell", again, like I have been in before.

"Router Hell", means that you don't even have the basic design of network routers working anymore. So then the whole network goes offline, and sure, you can plug one computer into the cable modem and use it, which might require calling the ISP to make work, but that takes awhile and is temporary. Without the router, there is basically, no network at all. Everything will cease to function. They may provide services, but how are you going to connect to them and access them?

That's another reason I want to make small changes. Before DD-WRT, and requiring every router to be DD-WRT compatible, I could go through "router hell", quite easily. All I had to do was have a router die on me. I needed to replace it with pretty much, a like minded router, or it would not work. Routers change, but DD-WRT provides a stable way to use them, with the downside of not being able to use AC yet or anything. But I have no AC cards, so it's too early to adopt AC anyway.

DD-WRT is capable of creating more than one wireless network, just like the default firmware was. The default firmware on this router model is too unstable anyway, but it works fine to use DD-WRT, so knowing that, I specifically bought it. Don't ask how I found this out, it was painful, and involved going through "router hell". In fact, I went through "router hell", when I needed to get the apple devices working.

I don't know what bridge mode is, but I know that there is a router mode instead of a gateway mode on DD-WRT. Gateway is what I have it set to, which uses NAT. If I set it to router, as is, it disables NAT. I think trying to disable NAT, is a good next step. However, it won't work with my current configuration. I'm sure I can make it work, but I don't know how. That was why I just left it as is.

It seems, like trying that step, is a good next step for me. So, I have ran into an issue where I can't get all my support here, although we are not done yet, because I may need more support here, as this may break things or something and I may need to know how to do the printing like I want again yet. In other words, there may be additional configuration to get the printing to work. But I should start there.

So I will decide where to get more support, and then post a link to it here. I will get my support there, and come back here when that step is figured out. It seems, you guys don't have the ability to help with that part, but you do with the other parts, which is okay. I'll hopefully, be back shortly. Thanks for trying to help me solve this!

 

[des000]

Here's my post: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=5840957#post5840957. We'll see what happens here, and I'll get back to this problem, if I do this and it doesn't break anything else. Then if it works, I'll try this again, and see what happens. And I'll get back to you here.

Feel free to say anything, if you have anything more to say in the meantime. Thanks again!

 

[doogald]

DD-WRT is capable of creating more than one wireless network, just like the default firmware was. The default firmware on this router model is too unstable anyway, but it works fine to use DD-WRT, so knowing that, I specifically bought it. Don't ask how I found this out, it was painful, and involved going through "router hell". In fact, I went through "router hell", when I needed to get the apple devices working.

I can't believe that any consumer router is too unstable to use in 2018, but, if som you should just buy routers that are stable enough and probably easy to configure. I think that you are making things much more complicated than they need to be. Apple Airport routers are easy to set up and maintain, and can be wirelessly bridged easily (if that is what you are doing.) Eero routers are absolutely dead-simple to set up and use. Just about set and forget. (Both expensive, but it sounds like it's worth it in your case.) Some people like Netgear Orbi for mesh networks, but I've also heard horror stories about them. One of the great things about Eero is that they software update themselves when firmware updates are out; Apple Airport routers tell you on the Airport software and they are also easy to update (though Airports don't have frequent updates; whenever you read about routers being compromised by hackers, it's almost never Airports that are.)

I don't know what bridge mode is, but I know that there is a router mode instead of a gateway mode on DD-WRT. Gateway is what I have it set to, which uses NAT. If I set it to router, as is, it disables NAT. I think trying to disable NAT, is a good next step. However, it won't work with my current configuration. I'm sure I can make it work, but I don't know how. That was why I just left it as is.

Bridge mode means that the routers do not create a new network and route traffic from one subnet to the other, but the second router becomes a device on the main subnet and "bridges" the packets back and forth between the gateway router and the devices connected to the bridge router, all on the same subnet. If your routers are connected by ethernet, connect the daughter routers to one of their ethernet ports rather than their WAN port, and, as you say, turn off NAT. They should get their address using DHCP from the gateway router (the one connected to your modem/however you get internet from your ISP). If they are connected to the gateway router wirelessly and you are trying to set them up that way, use repeater bridge mode. See https://www.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge for DD-WRT's instructions for that (plus a nice little diagram.)

It sounds like what you really want is for your clients and servers to be on the same subnet, which will allow AirPrint printing to work fine from any device.

 

[doogald]

Oh, sorry, I meant to add this and forgot. I once had a product that allowed you to AirPrint to a printer that doesn't;t support AirPrint. I no longer need it - my printers all support AirPrint now - but this is the next generation of the one that I used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00685423M/?tag=hawk-future-20&ascsubtag=UUimUvbUpU3055826

I am not 100% sure about this, but as long as this device can get a route to the IP printers that you have on the server network, I *think* that this device would become an AirPrint server on the client network side for you, if there is some reason why you can't flatten your network into a single one. It's not perfect - it tended to make printing slower than a native AirPrint printer in my experience - it may be a good workaround.

[edit] I just looked at the documentation - yes, this device can be set to discover printers across subnets.

 

[des000]

So, by this time, I have gotten airprint to work, by adjusting my routers. As soon as I'm done playing with the routers, and get them how I want them, I'll explain how I did it here. Since I know now the underlying problem, "sort of", I was able to work on a solution that fixed that. I'm still troubleshooting the how's it's going to stay working, but it does work, as of now, and I hope it will stay working. I'm just seeing if I can do it in my preffered way or not, right now.

 

[des000]

I tried my experiment now, and found that the way, I'd gotten it to work last night, was the only way I could get it to work, with my current equipment.

See: https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=5840957#post5840957

...for details.

This tells, what the smaller problem was, which helped solve the larger problem.

I just looked at the documentation - yes, this device can be set to discover printers across subnets.

This would be a way, which I didn't get to test, but it turns out, it's not the right way for me for now.

Thanks for your answers! I figured it out! Check out here: How to Make IPad Printing Available Accross Subnets

...for the whole story.

 

[des000]

Only one minor detail. Don't know how to "mark as solved", here, if it works that way here. Please teach me.

 

[doogald]

Ok, so basically you did what I suggested - flattened the network so what your gateway router continues to act as a router and what you call clientrouter is acting as an access point in the same subnet. That's the best and easiest solution.

The guy who was asking if you wanted to have clientrouter work as a downstream switch with a wireless access point was right - that's exactly what you are doing.

 

[des000]

Fixing this issue has taught me stuff. I guess I did, basically turn it into a downstream switch. Except for it had an access point, it's not a regular downstream switch. I didn't know enough about that terminology when he suggested it to say, "maybe", or "yes". Now, I do.

What I wanted to try before concluding that, that was what I needed, was to make the subnets talk to each other better. I accomplished that too. It didn't make airprint work, but it told me what I wanted to do to my other router.

Perhaps, you were able to pinpoint that, that solution would not work, but I was not able to understand you if you told me that. Now, you could always try again, at explaining why that didn't work, and I'll see if I understand you. But this is what I'll keep for now.

As long as I didn't have to do stuff such as re-wire or re-associate access points from routers, this was the best and easiest solution. Even in this configuration, I'm still using enough features of the router (clientrouter), that it will justify having two routers. Not just features that I can get in another router already there. Some of the ones, I'm not using yet, I plan to in the future, such as the USB port. I will use it to share a hard drive later. That's easier and cheaper, than buying a whole new NAS. Although, my dedicated NAS was needed for it too, and a router wouldn't have had enough features without major tweaking under the hood.

I noted your other possible solution, however, which was untested by me, but I'm sure works. I might use that solution in the future, but not now. I'm sure technology will improve by then, and I will be able to do the same thing with a cheaper or even easier way...

Thanks!

 

[des000]

Still don't know if I can mark this as solved or not though, like you can on the other site. Still learning about this site.

 

[doogald]

Fixing this issue has taught me stuff. I guess I did, basically turn it into a downstream switch. Except for it had an access point, it's not a regular downstream switch.

It is. The router has routing turned off, so it is acting both as an ethernet switch and an access point for WiFi within the same network as the gateway router (which you call "serverrouter"). It is both things. (WiFi is not an ethernet switch in network terms; more like an ethernet hub.)

What I wanted to try before concluding that, that was what I needed, was to make the subnets talk to each other better.

Now you don't have subnets. First of all, subnets is not the right term. You had three **networks**, two of which (what you called "clientrouter" and "guestrouter") were connected to the first (which you called "serverrouter") but not to each other. The WAN ports of "clientrouter" and "guestrouter" were each a member of the network on "serverrouter" (in other words, they had an IP address in the range supplied by "serverrouter") and anything connected to the ethernet ports or the WiFi of "clientrouter" or "guestrouter" were members of those separate networks. "clientrouter" and "guestrouter" were routing packets between themselves and "serverrouter" (mainly for the purpose of getting to the public internet, but perhaps to connect to members of the "serverrouter" network.) You were creating a double NAT for the members of "clientrouter" and "guestrouter".

For the benefit of everyone else, not knowing what you actual IP address ranges were, the networks were something like this:

serverrouter: 192.168.0.1 - 192.168.0.254
clientrouter: 192.168.1.1 - 192.168.1.254
guestrouter: 192.168.2.1 - 192.168.2.254

And the WAN ports of both clientrouter and guestrouter had an address on the 192.168.0.x network.

The issue you had is the Bonjour packets (which is what AirPrint uses) cannot be routed between IP networks - they must be on the same IP network range. IP based printers, however, can have packets routed, so when you were printing from a computer, it was possible to print from a computer connected to "clientrouter" and have it be printed on a printer connected to "serverrouter".

The solution was to change "clientrouter" from a router to a switch/Wifi access point, so devices connected to it are also members of the 192.168.0.x network.