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Hi,

We just received and installed our Cisco ASA 5505 router (replacing a Netgear router). Unfortunately, our Brother MFC-8460N network printer stopped working even after uninstalling and reinstalling the Brother printer software. Upon working with the Brother support staff, we found that the default network (node) name given to it (BRN_936260.ldsglobal.net) was the problem. However, when I changed the name to its hard-coded IP address it worked. Since I don't want to hard-code static IP addresses into each computer for the printer, I changed the name to "BROTHER" in both the printer's configuration and on the computer and things worked fine.

Unfortunately, after power cycling the printer, the network name had appended ".ldsglobal.net" to it so the name was then "BROTHER.ldsglobal.net". At that point, the computer did not recognize the printer until I manually changed the node name on the printer again back to just "BROTHER"

Can anyone help me in resolving this? Is the problem with the 5505 or the printer?

Thanks,
-James

I am not familiar with the Brother series of printer you mentioned (and I am not using the Cisco router you mentioned), but I do have some questions and comments. It sounds like that the Cisco router is assigning the name ".ldsglobal.net". When the printer has the name "BROTHER.ldsglobal.net" (or any other name), could you ping that full name from the PC? If you can, just add a new port in the driver that points to "BROTHER.ldsglobal.net" and that will help solve your problem. I can provide additional details if you need it.

Now there is a more geeky way of doing this (might need to be done anyway). We have to do this where I work every once in awhile because we have test domains on our network that don't have trusts setup. For me to access or ping a network device (i.e. testbox) in the boisetest.example.com domain, I have to use the fully qualified domain name of testbox.boisetest.example.com. That can be tiresome after awhile. Doing this next item allows me to just type in testbox and still get to that network device. I digress... You can add ldsglobal.net to your DNS list so that it can resolve properly.

• Get into your network connections so that you can see you ethernet ports. (View network connections)
• Right click on Local Area Connection. I am guessing there is only one connection.
• Click on Properties.
• Under the General Tab, scroll down until you find Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). Select it.
• Click on Properties.
• Under the General Tab, click on the Advanced button.
• Under the DNS tab, there are a lot of selections. The default on my PC here at home is "Append primary and connection specific DNS suffixes" and the box "Append parent suffixes of the primary DNS suffix" is checked.
• Where I work, they pre-populate the area under "Append these DNS suffixes" with work related domains. It is in this area that I have added the additional domains that I needed to automatically resolve. Try putting in "ldsglobal.net" (and ".ldsglobal.net"). You may be able to enter in ".ldsglobal.net" in the box after "DNS suffix for this connection" but I have't used that before. A quick note, I cannot remember at this time if you need to add in a "." before the domain name.
• Save all your changes (click OK a lot!) and see if you can ping the printer name without adding in ".ldsglobal.net".

If it doesn't work, reset all the defaults and go with my first suggestion.

Hi net_runner,

Thank you for your detailed reply. I apologize for the delay in my response... I've been extremely busy.

Anyhow, I was able to make it down to the church tonight and I tried your suggestion to no avail. I wasn't even able to ping brother.ldsglobal.net (fully qualified), so I figured it was something else. After poking around a bit in the printer's configuration, I saw that the printer node name was "brother.ldsglobal.net"; however, the printer name was "brother.ldsglob". It looks like the name was somehow truncated to 15 characters - and interestingly enough it was able to have a dot "." in the name. I am able to ping "brother.ldsglob" - crazy.

The solution was to configure the printer's port from the control panel (Printers & Faxes). I simply changed the port name from "brother" to "brother.ldsglob" (under "Printer Name or IP Address")

Thanks again for your reply...

jamesm76 wrote:...It looks like the name was somehow truncated to 15 characters - and interestingly enough it was able to have a dot "." in the name. I am able to ping "brother.ldsglob" - crazy.

Here is an interesting article on NetBIOS names versus host names (or machine names):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NetBIOS

The article will also describe characters not allowed ("." is an acceptable one) and you'll also see where the 15 character limit comes from (Windows).