Brother Printer using WLAN with Unifi APs

Having your printer continual to fall off WiFi is the worst. Whenever you actually want to print something, lo-and-behold, you can’t, and you need to spend 2-20 mins fiddling with it to get it back on the network. While all mine took was a printer restart for it to magically reconnect to wifi, this is always how I felt.

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After enough frustration, I finally took some time to sit down and fix the problem. After a bit of searching, I stumbled upon this Brother article (granted I’m printing from a Windows PC and my specific printer is a Brother MFC-L2750DW). That at least gave me some hope, as I was using a single SSID for both 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz – you know, like a sane person.

With the above article in hand, I created a new SSID that was only on the 2.4Ghz with the following settings (Unifi Controller 7.0.23):

New UI:

  • Broadcasting APs: I have it set to just the 1 where closest to the printer
  • WiFi Band: 2.4Ghz
  • WiFi Type: Standard
  • Multicast Management:
    • Multicast Enhancement: ▢
    • Multicast and Broadcast Control: ▢
  • Client Device Isolation: ▢
  • Proxy ARP: ▢
  • BSS Transition: ▢
  • UAPSD: ▢
  • Fast Roaming: ▢
  • 802.11 DTIM Period: Auto
  • Minimum Data Rate Control: Auto
  • Security Protocol: WPA2
  • PMF: Optional
  • Group Rekey Interval: ▣ 3600 seconds
  • Hide WiFi Name: ▣

Legacy UI:

  • Security: WPA Personal
  • WiFi Band: 2.4Ghz
  • WPA3: ▢
  • Guest Policy: ▢
  • Broadcasting APs: I have it set to just the 1 where closest to the printer
  • Multicast and Broadcast Filtering: ▢
  • Fast Roaming: ▢
  • Hide SSID: ▣
  • Group Rekey Interval: GTK rekeying every 3600 seconds
  • UAPSD: ▢
  • Multicast Enhancement: ▢
  • RADIU DAS/DAC (CoA): ▢
  • Beacon Country: ▢
  • BSS Transition: ▢
  • TDLS Prohibit: ▢
  • Point to Point: ▢
  • P2P Cross Connect: ▢
  • Proxy ARP: ▢
  • L2 Isolation: ▢
  • Legacy Support: ▢
  • PMF: Optional
  • WPA Mode: WPA2 Only
  • DTIM Mode: Use Default Values
  • 2G Data Rate Control: ▣
    • 6Mbps
    • Disable CCK Rates: ▢
    • Also require clients to use rates at or above the specified value: ▢
    • Send beacons at 1Mbps: ▢

The printer has been online for over 20 days, whereas before it would fall off the network sometimes before it even fell asleep. 🎉🎉

Hopefully this helps someone else out there.