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This may seem like a rudimentary question, but I wasn't sure where else to ask it. I've set up some QoS rules on my router that give the highest priority to all traffic incoming and outgoing to my computer's network address, and it has so far done an excellent job of preventing lag and communication issues while someone else on my network decides to watch netflix.

An unfortunate coincidence - which I now believe to be a side effect - is that my HP 6980 printer refuses to communicate with my computer to print. No one else on the network has the same issues. I have attempted to reinstall the printer multiple times without success. In the settings, the printer shows the correct information and even the ink remaining, but will not communicate when trying to print something.

Could my QoS settings (set up with very minimal knowledge) have removed my ability to print wirelessly? If so, how might I go about fixing it?

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    Is this a SOHO networking issue? If so (and I'm not sure this has been "set in stone" yet, but check here anyway: meta.networkengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/23/…), you're probably better off asking this elsewhere.
    – John Jensen
    Commented May 21, 2013 at 16:21
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    This is, and you are correct; this wasn't the correct place to ask this question, assuming that meta post saying SOHO questions should be blacklisted is correct. That being said, I've gotten a bunch of leads to try from the answers here, so I am glad that I asked anyway.
    – Daniel G. Wilson
    Commented May 22, 2013 at 17:08
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    AFAIK those rules aren't "hard" ones yet, but still good to keep in mind if we get past beta (and if they do become that way). I'm not sure that this particular question would fall into the majority of SOHO networking problems either though; there are definitely some grey areas that need to be addressed. In any case, I'm still glad that you got some decent info!
    – John Jensen
    Commented May 22, 2013 at 17:11

6 Answers 6

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Could it? Yes. Without knowing exactly what your network looks like and what QoS rules/settings were used, it's hard to say for sure.

Steps I would try:

  1. Remove QoS and see what happens
  2. Post more details on your network and configuration
  3. Check for any bugs with the printer firmware that may cause issues.
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Typically the QoS found in the SOHO routers (I assume that's what you have since you don't mention the router type) will just prioritize some traffic at the expense of other traffic.

More advanced QoS done with on a Cisco router (for example) will allow you to do more than that, up to actually dropping specific traffic exceeding certain thresholds but I tend to believe that's not the case here. All this assuming that the QoS you configured does what you think it does.

But above all this, if this is a typical SOHO installation, then then printer will be on the local network and the traffic between your PC and the printer won't go through the firewall.

As mentioned before, you should temporarily remove whatever QoS rules you created and see if printing works. The fact that you can see ink levels means the driver can communicate with the printer (some sort of polling usually) so I don't think it's a firewall issue on your PC. Those firewalls usually allow outbound connections.

Wireshark is also an excellent troubleshooting tool, you can try and see what kind of traffic flows between your PC and your printer, if any.

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could qos settings have removed my ability to print wirelessly?

That is very unlikely since it is limited to your computer... the more probable cause is a software firewall on your pc or some other issue... steps to isolate....

  • First, be sure you can still ping the printer and also that you can telnet to the printer's port (ours use TCP 515)... if you can't, them you need to solve these issues first.
  • Next reinstall printer drivers... does this help?
  • If all that fails, try removing the qos settings.... does that help?
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QoS will either speed up or slow down traffic on your network. Most likely it wouldn't disallow printing but if the printer software is very time sensitive it could cause the errors.

Most likely though I think it is an issue with the software install on your computer. Especially considering it is localized to your machine.

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I'm going to go out on a limb and say no.

Unless your SOHO router specifically supports QoS for WLANs, then I would say the settings you have only affect the LAN. That said, once your printer traffic is off the wireless and into the LAN, it will probably be marked with best effort (or whatever your lower QoS priority is).

WLAN QoS is normally a completely different setting from LAN QoS, the only way to know for sure is to disable the QoS. If that does resolve the issue, I would say that its a bug with the QoS or the printer drivers, as QoS really shouldn't affect something like this.

Maybe double check the ports the printer uses, it might be that windows allows information through its firewall pertaining to operational state and ink status, but the printer may use a less well known port for the actual printing, and might be the cause of the issue.

TL;DR - Unless you're using 100% bandwidth constantly (highly unlikely), QoS should only cause devices to slow down. Not to stop working completely.

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If you are installing the driver, and connecting to local printer directly, but other users are connecting to a print cue located on a server, it is possible that the QOS is causing you issues. When you print to directly to a printer, the amount of data is quite large. With most drivers, a print job gets passed as a TIFF image.

So, assuming the wireless network is a different subnet/vlan as the one containing the printer...and that the printer and server/print cue are on the same vlan/subnet...and also that you are connected directly to the printer (safe assumption, since you can see printer stats), your large print job (tiff image) may be captured by QOS, while everyone else's job is passing from the server to the printer without ever crossing an L3 boundary, and being subjected to the QOS policy.

Hope that makes sense.

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