In reply to a post by meditator:

The printer is a laserjet that goes way back to the 1990s. I don't ever recall seeing its MAC address being on a test printout either. Would a ping to the printer return its MAC address?

All networked HP printers that I've had dealings with have a menu option to print out the Printer network information and settings including the current IP, network name, protocols used and MAC of the printer amongst other things. I've got an old A3 laserjet on my network which certainly provides all the detail in the printout.

No, no, no. It's definitely on its own, on the network. It's not connected up to a particular computer.

It's an old HP 4 Series laserjet, having a built-in JetDirect module. The 10BaseT interface on that module is connected to my network using a wired RJ45 patchcord.

So can you open the Jetdirect admin page by entering the IP address in a browser? Or just print a test page as someone suggested.

It may even have a sticker on the module with the MAC address.

It looks like you can either print the details as suggested or use TELNET to see the MAC.

www.irongeek.com/i.php?page=security/networkprinterhacking
The pictures above are of a external JetDirect 170x box. Notice the picture on the right; on the far right hand side you will notice a little button labeled "test". Pressing this button on most JetDirect boxes will print out a diagnostic page listing statistics and the IP setting for the JetDirect box. If your printer has an internal JetDirect card you will have to negotiate the menus to find out how to print this diagnostics page. Once you hit the test button the printer should print out a page or two that lists information like host name, MAC address, IP Address, subnet mask, default gateway, firmware revision and some general statistics.

Thanks, folks, for nagging me about a Test Page printout of some sort, as it's turned out you were quite correct and I've now obtained the printer's MAC address.

Last night I made an effort to look for the Test Page printout I made earlier this year when I set the printer up with its own fixed IP address, but ... you guessed it ..... I couldn't find it. I'd clearly filed it away, but goodness knows where. So I then decided to read the original three manuals on this printer and see if I could see any mention of MAC address. None whatsoever. Not a sausage.

Heck, I decided to do a new Test Page printout regardless, and when I did, low and behold, in the corner of one section of it was listed 'Hardware Address'. Phew!

I've now the option of entering the IP and MAC addresses of all three devices into the ARP table in the 8800.

Incidentally, with MAC addresses is there any distinction between uppercase and lowercase characters?

I've always given printers a meaningful Network Name during initial setup. I say meaningful (as in recognisable) because I looked after a couple of dozen in our dept so it made identifying them on the domain easy. You can address the printer by its' name rather than IP and that also avoided problems caused by changing IP's each morning when they're switched on.

The mac code is hex so there is no distinction between upper and lower case as there are only 6 letters (a-f).

Yes, I kinda noticed it was hexadecimal coding. Cheers for confirming that there's no distinction in the way the address is used, whether the alpha element is upper or lowercase.

My more general thanks go to all respondents here, for your advice to me on using fixed IP addressing and for educating me a little further in this aspect of configuring the router.