How to find IP address of printer

[WinnaDixie]

Hi there,

I'm trying to set up remote printing from a wireless Mac mini box to print to a hardwired printer on Windows OS Vista. The system (It's a Mac) is asking for the IP address of the printer. My question is how to go about isolating what that particular IP address might be. I know my IP, but each attached device should have its own, I'm thinking.

Thank you in advance if you can answer where I go from here.

[AboveTheLogic]

the IP of the printer = the IP of the vista machine (which sounds like its acting as the print server)

just beware that the IP might change, you can consider setting it static, or using the hostname instead

[clanmills]

I agree with "Above" - the print server is probably the Vista machine. However sometimes the printer can have its own IP address and you can probably query that with the control panel on the printer.

I personally prefer to use static IP addresses for my machines at home and if I had an IP addressable printer, I'd assign it a static address (and a name in the hosts file).

If you're using dynamic IP addresses and you're not sure of the printer's IP address, you can use a port scanner such as nmap to search your LAN for available ports. http://nmap.org/download.html I've just run this on my mac and here's the result. You can see that imac (192.168.2.105) is offering a printer (only the mac and the router are switched on at the moment).

525 /Users/rmills/gnu> nmap 192.168.2.0/24

Starting Nmap 4.76 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2009-01-07 23:33 PST
Interesting ports on belkin (192.168.2.1):
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT   STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open  http

Interesting ports on imac (192.168.2.105):
Not shown: 992 closed ports
PORT     STATE SERVICE
80/tcp   open  http
88/tcp   open  kerberos-sec
139/tcp  open  netbios-ssn
445/tcp  open  microsoft-ds
515/tcp  open  printer
548/tcp  open  afp
631/tcp  open  ipp
5900/tcp open  vnc

Nmap done: 256 IP addresses (2 hosts up) scanned in 25.69 seconds
526 /Users/rmills/gnu>

Although I've used a mac, I believe there's a windows version of this utility available for download.

[AboveTheLogic]

yeah you can get nmap for windows, linux, and iphone... I've used 'em

I'm a little surprised that it's available for mac though

[clanmills]

Thanks to the miracle of VMware Fusion, my Mac runs MacOSX, Windows (32bit XP and 64bit Vista) and Linux (Ubuntu) at the same time on one screen! Incredible. You can cut'n'paste between the windows and of course files are shared. However I mostly use it as a UNIX computer, so I can pull down and build all the opensource code. Best machine I've ever used. http://clanmills.com/articles/vmware/

I confess however that I find Windows easier to use! Cough, splutter, shock, horror - how could anybody say they find Windows easier to use than a Mac?

I really like the Mac's printing system based on PDF. It's really good and the PDF support in the machine is wonderful. On a 24" 1920x1200 monitor, the paperless office is almost here.