How does Canon automatically connect the PIXMA printer to the WLAN router

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I just bought a Canon PIXMA TS6150. I downloaded an app on my windows 10 machine as instructed from ij.start.canon. Then some magic occurred and my printer was automatically connected to the WLAN without first connecting via USB or me having to type anything into the printer.

How did my laptop manage to communicate with the printer without the printer being first connected to the WLAN router or directly to the laptop via USB.

I'm also surprised that the app was able to grab the WLAN password from somewhere on the computer without first asking to open a key safe or something like that.

bradgonesurfing

Posted 2018-06-10T19:19:22.617

Reputation: 143

I'm going to take a guess. I think it turned my laptop into a temporary WLAN hotspot with a special SSID. It then configured the printer and then it switched the laptop back as a wlan client. – bradgonesurfing – 2018-06-10T19:29:57.393

1"How did my laptop manage to communicate with the printer without the printer being first connected to the WLAN router or directly to the laptop via USB?" Answer: "I downloaded [and installed] an app on my windows 10 machine as instructed from ij.start.canon." Can you be more specific as to your question? – fixer1234 – 2018-06-10T19:45:03.797

ij.start.canon tells you to install an app which will connect the printer to the network. The printer is not connected via usb or bluetooth or any other means to the laptop. After you click through a few options something happens and then the printer is now connected to the same WLAN as the laptop. I was curious on what techniques the app could use be used to achieve this. My self comment above is a guess. – bradgonesurfing – 2018-06-10T20:06:37.437

Answers

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I’m assuming you followed direction similar to those found here: https://support.usa.canon.com/kb/index?page=content&id=ART167454

With that said, you left a lot of details out of your question about the process you followed which makes it fairly easy to determine what takes place.

First, you enable easy wireless connect on the printer.

Second, you complete the setup from the software on your computer. During that setup you are warned that, “the network connection is temporarily disabled during setup.”

Therefore, it is fairly clear that the printer is enabling its wireless interface and broadcasting a temporary wireless network that your laptop then connects to in order to finish configuring the printer.

Printers have had similar functionality for a long time, called wireless direct.

When you ran the setup program on your laptop, you were prompted to elevate to an administrative mode, when you chose to “allow the software to make changes to your computer.” That is all that is necessary to read any passwords of saved wireless networks from your computer.

Appleoddity

Posted 2018-06-10T19:19:22.617

Reputation: 9 360

I guess the laptop had wireless direct turned on out of the box. Thanks for the answer. – bradgonesurfing – 2018-06-11T07:44:19.540

Asked: 2018-06-10T19:19:22.617

Viewed: 89 times

Active: 2018-06-11T03:48:27.390