this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2025
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Honestly sounds more like a network problem
Sure, but how. If the printer is plugged into a switch which my computer is plugged into, both going to the same router, why is there a network problem that could cause this?
all the cables are good? all the network configs are good? firewall maybe? does the switch not support a network feature that is required?
you didn't explicitly say it, so i have to ask: can the same computer running windows print over the network?
When I was on windows it could not print over the network. My partner who is still on windows can't either.
All the cables are good I've checked them myself.
Neither of our Firewalls should be set up to block it, although I admit I could have made a mistake here if the default config and one with minor tweaks would prevent it on both Linux and windows.
Network config is largely untouched although again I could have made a mistake here on Linux and windows.
The switch is ubiquity and so is the dream machine, I assume they're very capable.
Can you ping the IP of the printer from your PC? If not, is it part of the same subnet or are there VLAN shenanigans going on? If yes, did you try using the IP directly in Windows? I could imagine the switch blocking mDNS or something (which likely is the default discovery method).
If you can print from your phone, does that actually use the wifi network or does it connect using wifi direct (or some other mechanism)?
I can't, but my unifi gives me the same IP address that the printer says it has. I believe it's a part of the same subnet and there are no vlans as far as I'm aware.
I can try the IP on windows.
I'm not certain how I would check which wifi mechanism my phone is using.
I appreciate all the troubleshooting.
If the printer is able to get an IP address and shows up in Unifi, the connection from the printer to the controller must be fine. If your PC has internet access, it's connection must be fine as well.
If both are on the same subnet (in most cases, that would mean that the IP addresses of both devices only differ in the last block of digits, e.g. 192.168.1.28 and 192.168.1.10), they should directly connect through the switch. Blocking access there is definitely possible (VLANs, Port Isolation, ..), but none of those would be enabled by default, so I wouldn't expect them to be turned on if you didn't mess with them.
I suppose there is also a possibility, that access could be blocked directly on the printer. My Brother printer has a web interface, where you can enable/disable the different protocols and enable an IP whitelist. But those aren't enabled by default either, so they should be fine if you didn't mess with anything.
Overall, it's fairly hard to diagnose this remotely. I'd probably try the following:
That's assuming that you actually want to get it working. If you don't print a lot, just plugging in a cable every once in a while probably isn't too much of a hassle.
As 9blb says, this is a networking issue. Considering both your Linux and Windows machines cannot print over LAN or WAN, you should start at the switch.
Does the printer's port config match that of the Linux and Windows machines? For simplicity, they need to all be on the same VLAN and be access. For accessing machines within the same network, don't worry about routing traffic to the firewalls or dumping it to the router, that introduces needless complexity on a home network.
If that is true, then check the printer's network settings. The subnet and IP range need to match that of the Linux and Windows machines, allowing access over the same VLAN. While here, also check for duplicate IPs. If the IP range or subnet is wrong, your traffic will either drop at the switch or get dumped to the router/firewall depending on how you set the routes. If you have duplicated IPs, your network is gonna be confused on where to send the packets and kill whichever route it deems to be an imposter.
If that's all matching and you're still getting nowhere, double check your Linux and Windows machines to ensure you have the proper driver's installed.