Trying to connect Canon MF6540 via IP to Airport Extreme

Question

I recently purchased an Airport Extreme so I could use the USB port to attach a hard drive to run Time Machine for my two laptops wirelessly. I wanted to connect my Canon MF6540 printer via IP (like I'd done with my old Linksys router).
Unfortunately I've called both Canon and Apple support and neither can help me.
According to the printer network settings the Airport Extreme is not automatically assigning an IP address and I don't know enough about networking to manually assign one.
Can anyone help me?

Answer 1

L_O wrote:
I don't know how to ping on a mac - could you help?
Go to your Utilities folder and launch Network Utility. You'll see a tab labeled "ping". Enter the address of the printer and hit the button.
You can also use the Terminal program. It's also in the Utilities folder. Type "ping 10.0.1.200" or whatever address your printer uses. Control-C to quit.
Either of these methods should return something like the following:
Johns-iMac:~ john$ ping 10.0.1.100
PING 10.0.1.100 (10.0.1.100): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=0 ttl=255 time=3.325 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=3.407 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=2.531 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=4.346 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=3.247 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=3.618 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=2.896 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=7 ttl=255 time=3.479 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=8 ttl=255 time=2.851 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.1.100: icmp_seq=9 ttl=255 time=4.155 ms
^C
--- 10.0.1.100 ping statistics ---
10 packets transmitted, 10 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 2.531/3.385/4.346/0.534 ms
Johns-iMac:~ john$
10.0.1.100 is the address of my printer. If you're not getting anything like the above there's something wrong with your network connection so that's what we have to fix first.
Wireless security has been turned off but I don't know if that matters since I'm connecting directly via a Cat5 cable.
Correct. Doesn't matter.
Canon's setup utility is only for PC... so I'm out of luck on that.
Are you sure about that? Check the following - they're labeled "drivers" but make sure they're not something you need:
http://www.usa.canon.com/consumer/controller?act=ModelInfoAct&fcategoryid=164&mo delid=16478#DownloadDetailAct