Belkin play router - Bonjour?

July 5, 2010 11:11 AM

I just purchased a Belkin Play wireless -N router (model 47D4302). Everything works fine except Bonjour on my all Mac network.

I can replace the Belkin router with my old NetGear router, and Bonjour works. Connect the Belkin back in its place - can't browse Bonjour devices (specifically a Brother HL-5250DN series, which has a static address).

I can use the printer if I set it up using he static address, but it bugs the heck out of me that it won't browse the LAN for Bonjour discoverable devices.

Any thoughts? Belkin's tech support is offshore, and barely able to communicate, much less diagnose this problem.

Thanks in advance.

posted by jpburns to Computers & Internet (7 answers total)

It sounds like a firewall issue. Chances are the NetGear was allowing ports that the Belkin is not-- you may have to add these ports manually to the Belkin firewall. Bonjour ports are available here.
posted by stresstwig at 11:21 AM on July 5, 2010

Response by poster: Yeah... But doesn't the firewall deal with things outside my local network? My printer is hard-wired (ethernet) to the router.
posted by jpburns at 12:22 PM on July 5, 2010

Apply any applicable firmware updates and try again. If that fails, return your router for a different model or call tech support to ask for support.
posted by Blazecock Pileon at 12:53 PM on July 5, 2010

Maybe you need to enable multicast / UPnP?
posted by kickingtheground at 1:00 PM on July 5, 2010

Response by poster: Already did the firmware, and the terrible, terrible support, but thanks.

I can configure the printers manually, it just bugs me that it doesn't seem to pass that Bonjour stuff.
posted by jpburns at 3:43 PM on July 5, 2010

Best answer: It's a Belkin. Crap support, useless manual, tolerable hardware, minimal (& confusing / contradictory) configuration options.

Can't speak particularly on printers, but I spent half a day trying to get iTunes sharing (also uses Bonjour) working reliably on a F7D4301 (the F7D4302's bigger brother), and gave up. I'm not sure whether it flat-out ignores the IP multicast address range (224.0.0.0/4) or just handles it very very badly. I did seem to get it to work once, and it worked for a while (so it was passing port 5353) - but that stopped when I rebooted, and I could never get it working again.

Lesson: never buy a router that touts "Magic Reboots" (their self-healing app / config) as a feature…

Toss it back at the vendor as hard as you can. Since you say you're all-Mac, buy an Airport Extreme; if that's too much to spend, buy a dual-band Linksys (or maybe a Netgear).
posted by Pinback at 8:39 PM on July 5, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks for the advice. I'll be returning the router today.
posted by jpburns at 4:47 AM on July 6, 2010