I've heard from several pros that using DHCP for networked printers is generally a bad idea and they should be static instead, however I can't seem to find anywhere that states this or explains why. We print from a Windows platform mainly, but occasionally need to print from AS/400 or Unix, which needs to see the printer in DNS. When a printer goes bad and needs replaced, we've been seeing issues with the time it takes for the system to "see" the new printer that we didn't see when the printers were static. Does anyone know if there's a recommended standard and could point me to a few sources that explain why?

not sure if you are talking from ahome perspective or business perspective. From a home network you should definetly set up a hard address , I run a canon home printer on a print server . In order to print to this you have to set up the client on all your pc's and give it the address of the printer , if you let dhcp hand out the addresses then the printer could acquire a different address and you get intermittent or no connectivity to the printer.

In industry I've yet to see network printers that weren't statically assigned IP addresses. Static IP's are generally used for network devices like printers and servers so as to avoid possible confusion that may arise from DHCP should it give one IP today to one unit, and a different one tomorrow. If the address never changes, you never have issues with not being able to find the device.

It just adds one more point of failure on your network. Best practice would either be to assign it a static IP address, or give it a DHCP reservation based on its MAC address.

Your problem is more likely a result of stale ARP cache at the nearest router local to the printer, especially if static. DHCP May actually help auto refresh the cache due to the DHCP process if router sees it. Otherwise treat it like static and have the router ops. refresh/clear the cache. I just setup DHCP Reservations (IP-IEEE_MAC) for printers and it works GREAT. Did so due to malware causing printers to default back to DHCP anyways. This way they don't stop my printers! Malware uses Telnet & HTTP to do so.

why?...its because if your printer changes IP address your Q goes down x 200 queues... you get the picture