KamilKozyra asks:
General question: If I buy a wireless printer (HP, Lexmark, etc.), can I print (non-USB) with SSID broadcast disabled?
If I enabled broadcast, successfully setup & connect my printer, and then again disable my SSID broadcast, could I still print?
Browser: Firefox 17
System: Windows 7
Tagged: computer network, printing, share printer, wireless printing
System: Windows 7
Tagged: computer network, printing, share printer, wireless printing
2 Answers -
ha14
November 25, 2012you have to enable broadcast for a new device. once a device has connected, it should remember the SSID without having to turn broadcasting on each time. If it doesn’t remember it, there’s a problem somewhere, either with the network configuration or the device itself, some old printers or device perhaps will refuse to connect unless SSID is broadcast.
inSSIDer from MetaGeek
http://www.metageek.net/products/inssider/
Having SSID broadcast disabled essentially makes your Access Point invisible unless a wireless client already knows the SSID, or is using tools that monitor or ‘sniff’ traffic from an AP’s associated clients.
turning off SSID broadcast does not effectively protect the network from attacks, as network monitoring tools can still easily find the SSID.
Disabling Wireless Direct Printing will not affect printing from your devices or other as they are on the same network. Wireless Direct is beneficial to not share network passwords.
In a home Wi-Fi network, roaming is largely unnecessary and the SSID broadcast feature serves no useful purpose. You should disable this feature to improve the security of your WLAN. Once your wireless clients are manually configured with the right SSID, they no longer require these broadcast messages.
http://compnetworking.about.com/cs/wirelessproducts/qt/disablessidcast.htm
Connecting to a wireless network with SSID Broadcast disabled
http://www6.nohold.net/Cisco2/GetArticle.aspx?docid=6c36b3df567147f9a8335d5663d5dbcc_5451.xml&pid=80&converted=0
Jan Fritsch
November 26, 2012Does your printer have a manual option to input the wireless name and security options? Usually if this option is present your printer should be able to connect to the wireless network even without SSID broadcast.
Having that said there is no (security) benefit in hiding the SSID in the first place as it can still be found with tools like KisMac or InSSIDer.