HP Printers and high proportion of ethernet collisions

[Steve-Potter]

Hi all,

Meraki MS225 stack, CAT 6a, two HP Printers, both office jet types but different models and ages.

Several staff members mentioned the printers were slow to start printing, checked them out and couldn't find anything obvious, but the switch showed brown on the ports the printers were connected to. (error message was high proportion of Ethernet collisions)

Switched ports, and the error followed, switched, switches and same again, had the networking company in to test the outlets and patch cables, all error free.

Doubting both printers had same fault I placed a dumb switch in between the Meraki switch and the printers, voila, all issues fixed. 

Now I did try all the usual duplex, half duplex, fix speed etc on the Meraki port, but no changes, and it hasn't happened before in the two years the switches were in, so I am surmising a firmware upgrade might be to blame, so I am waiting till the next one and will take out the dumb switch and check again.

I am posting this in the hope that someone has had similar issues and knows the fix. 

Cheers

Steve

[BrechtSchamp]

Sounds like you tried what I'd try.

Have you tried downgrading to an older firmware?

Definitely also open a support ticket. Seeing as it's easy to reproduce, it should be "easy" to solve.

[Steve-Potter]

No I haven't reverted firmware yet and I will raise a new ticket if no-one has experienced similar problem and has a resolution.

Steve

[MichelPrevost]

Hi, 

If the port on the switch and the printer is set to auto-negotiate it's speed and duplex, look at that brown port and check how duplex have been set by the auto-negotiation. If your switch port indicate that it is working in half-duplex and that you have collision, I would believe it's a firmware issue. As there is collision on that port, it's tell me that the printer have successfully negotiated and set itself to full duplex, but the switch have not because of the collision counter. 

Have you try to downgrade the switch firmware? Keep us posted. 

[BlakeRichardson]

Have you tried changing the ethernet cables? 

[PhilipDAth]

What firmware version are you running on the switches?

I know it is a bit yucky, but have you tried power cycling the switches they plug into?

[Steve-Potter]

Current version: MS 10.45

I haven't done that yet as it would power cycle many telephones as well, god forbid people have to log back into the phone system again 😉

We also have another HP printer, of a similar but not same model in another building, similar switches in a stack and the same happens there, also a dumb switch fixed the issues.

Steve

[Steve-Potter]

Hi yes, changed patch cables both ends, and switch port, and switch, and patch panel port and outlet. Had fixed wiring checked using a very expensive Fluke cat6a infrastructure test rig.

[CWK_Rob]

I've just experienced the same thing with a Canon printer.  I upgraded a layer 3 MS320 with a brand new MS350-24X.  It was next on our refresh schedule.

The MS350 will not even recognize that the printer is connected.  Moved the printer to a port on an MS220 that is behind the MS350 and the switch port came up, but with a high number of ethernet collision errors.  Forcing the port to 100/half (thats what it auto negotiated) cleared the error state. 

However if users experience slow print jobs are firmwares the next reasonable thing to look at?  All switches in this network are at MS 11.30 currently.

[MichelPrevost]

Hi, I would say the issue is more located at the printer. Try by updating the printer NIC driver, check the configuration of the NIC itself. It's not working with two differents switches! It's more likely to be something else than the switches (bad network cable, printer's NIC driver, printer's NIC itself)

[CWK_Rob]

Even though it works OK now, I am going to update the printer's firmware to the latest available, just to confirm that it is the printer's NIC that's causing the issue.  I'll get back with my results.

[Brons2]

I have 22 HP MFPs in this building and I have no issues like the one you describe.  The printer models are the 67560 and the 87660   Running a mix of MS250s and MS42Ps, the printers would be plugged into one of those two models.

One thing I do when I set up the printers is turn off all services on the HP side that are not necessary in my environment, like multicast, Bonjour, AirPrint and IPv6.  These services are on by default.  I don't know how they interact with Meraki and I don't plan on finding out because I don't need them.

Also, there are fairly frequent firmware updates for the HP models I have.  I try to stay on top of those.