I'm confused about wireless printing!

I wonder if anyone can give me a simple explanation......
My wireless printer (Epson SX535WD) started intermittently refusing to print even though the signal was strong and all the settings were fine. So I noticed that there was an ethernet connection; connected this to the router and wired up the laptops via Devolo plugs. The printer works fine now even if I disable wireless at the laptops but if I disable wireless at the Hub3 there's no printer available. So why would disabling wireless at the router affect ethernet printing? I hate not understanding these things! (Yes, I know that networking via the electricity cables is a dark art, gives you warts etc. but hopefully it's only temporary.)

The printer connects to the router via wireless.

As long as the printer and router are on then the printer will be available over wired or wireless from other devices connected to the same router.

But, disable the wireless in the router and the printer is no longer connected.

Essentially all the devices need to have some sort of connection to the router. All can be wired, some wired some wireless or all wireless. But, connect printer via wireless and then turn off the wireless in the router and it doesn't matter how everything else is connected they will not be able to print.

EDIT : Just to add you might be thinking the PCs connect directly to the printer. They don't. They have to go through the router to get to the printer.

Edited by ian72 (Wed 14-May-14 16:35:47)

So the order to print goes down the wire to the router, which then uses wireless to send the job to the printer - is that right? I was getting a message about channel conflicts at the router (from the printer diagnostics interface) - will that still be an issue then with my new setup? I've changed the channel and it does seem less flaky.

In reply to a post by GeoffB:

So I noticed that there was an ethernet connection; connected this to the router and wired up the laptops via Devolo plugs.

The sentence above appears to indicate that you have now got the printer connected via a wire to the router.

Is that so?

If the printer has both wired and wireless connections it may not be auto-switching unlike the laptops.

You may have to alter the printer settings manually to use the wired interface.

Yes, I thought that might be the case. I can't see anything in the online manual about using an ethernet connection as the whole point of the printer is that it's wireless; the ethernet connection doesn't get a mention. So could I fit a switch to take my LAN cable and the one connected to the printer? But I haven't changed any settings to say that I want to use ethernet. Everything is working well though so I'll leave it alone unless I have problems.

If the PC is connected via a wire then it will send the print job via that method. And if the printer is wireless then the router will send the job on to the printer via wireless. Essentially all traffic goes through the router no matter what the medium.

If you have plugged a cable in to the printer but not reconfigured it then it is probably still using wireless (hence it stopping if you turn the wireless off in the router). There is almost certainly an option in the menus to configure the wired connection but if you don't need to and are happy with wireless then carry on that way.

I use an Epson printer that supports both and as I have a switch within feet of it I use wired rather than wireless. But, as long as all is working well it wouldn't make much difference.

If you remove the wired link between the router and printer I expect all will still work. Which is all you want.

Re the wired connection, the printer on the Ethernet port could very well need "installing" on your laptop(s) and/or on the router setup. It almost certainly doesn't exist on the network as a wired device. As above and as you said, not really worth the candle. Unless you would prefer your laptops to be wireless rather than Devolo wired.

Thanks for the informative replies. I finally found 'when wireless is enabled Ethernet is disabled' in the online manual. So clearly this is to avoid conflicts. Strange though that, since I installed the wire, I haven't had the intermittent refusal to print over the network that was bugging me. I went into the HH3 router Advanced Settings menus and did a map of the router's connections. The printer is showing as a wireless connection only (with the wire connected) so it obviously needs to be configured if I want to use it in future - probably just by disabling wireless in the printer config.
I often use the Network Center's network map in W7 to check things but can't find anything similar in W8. Is it hidden somewhere?