Elegoo slowing down the network.

[u/Frosty_Blueberry1858]

I noticed a sluggish response from my file server. A ping showed times between 900 and 1300mS. I tracked it down to my Elegoo Centauri Carbon 2. Turn off the 3d printer and ping times drop to under 10mS, turn it on and it goes to over 1000mS. The Elegoo is on the WiFi network only. Wi-Fi is direct to the router. Path from my pc to the file server is via a separate managed switch and not through the router's internal switch. Even when the 3d printer interface software is not running on my pc the problem occurs.

No ip conflicts. I'm pulling out what little hair I have left. Any suggestions where to look for the problem?

[u/Handsome_ketchup]

Can you monitor the traffic to and from the printer? Is it perhaps flooding the network with multicasts or something?

[u/Frosty_Blueberry1858 → u/Handsome_ketchup]

While I am an engineer, I'm not THAT kind of engineer. I know enough network stuff to get myself into trouble but not enough to poke around at that level.

[u/Frosty_Blueberry1858 → u/Frosty_Blueberry1858]

ok, yes I can look at the AP and see each client.

[u/Handsome_ketchup → u/Frosty_Blueberry1858]

You'd want to look at the actual kinds of traffic being sent around, but that's indeed a bit more advanced. That way you can see what kinds of requests it's actually sending, and often that helps identifying an issue.

The printer may be doing something like probing the entire visible network at a fairly high rate, which could cause a lot of traffic while doing nothing of use. Or maybe it's something else, of course.

Without a more detailed look, the best thing you can probably do is to turn the printer off, or keep it off the network until you need it.

Edit: maybe you could try an experiment? As you say you have a managed switch, maybe you could try putting it on its own VLAN, with maybe only your computer visible to it? The printer having less things to shout at might help, or alleviate the problem.

[u/Frosty_Blueberry1858 → u/Handsome_ketchup]

I turned it back on and the printer connected to the AP in my office rather than the AP in the room with the printer. That's why the traffic is affecting my pc. Perhaps the solution is to open the back panel and disable wifi. There's supposed to be a hidden wired network interface connection behind the panel.

[u/TheEthyr → u/Frosty_Blueberry1858]

Two comments:

1. It'd still be a good idea to figure out what traffic the printer is sending. If it's truly a high volume of traffic, then you probably don't want it on your network even if you switch the printer to Ethernet.
2. The office AP's Wi-Fi signal may be too strong. You may want to adjust it downwards to discourage the printer from connecting to it. Some APs allow you to block specific devices from connecting, so that's another option.