So Stephanie and I each got a Nintendo DS for Christmas, and we had lots of fun playing Mario Kart at her parents’ house. So we get back to the apartment where I’m expecting to be able to play on my wireless router. Turns out, Nintendo isn’t all that good at implementing 802.11b for some reason. It finds my router, lets me enter my WEP key, and tests my connection successfully. Then I start Mario Kart and try to connect and after about ten seconds my game freezes—the music gets stuck on one note and the screen stops animating and it doesn’t respond to any kind of input. I went to NintendoWiFi.com, and see that for some Linksys routers you have to set “Basic Rate” to “1-2Mbps” for it to work. I tried that, and the very first time I connected after that, I could actually connect, but then I couldn’t do anything else. But it refuses to work a second time. Some other Linksys routers require that WEP be disabled. I haven’t tried that, but I’m not about to run my router without WEP. I’ve also tried disabling port forwarding (the only “special” feature I’ve messed with on the router) without success.
It is very annoying to me that Nintendo actually has to have a list of routers that do and do not work with their device. This page should not need to exist. Seriously. I mean, 802.11b is not some obscure, new, or undefined technology. It’s been common for something like four years now. I have a computer with a Linksys card in it, a computer with a D-Link card in it, and a Dell Axim, and they all connect to the router just fine. Why does the Nintendo DS have a problem?
Update: I’ve checked the troubleshooting guide, which is clearly written for people who don’t know what an SSID is. It tells me to call an 800 number for my specific problem. I may try that, although I have low expectations. I also found some information about specific ports, and found that some routers only work if the DS is assigned a static IP address. I’ll try those things and see what I can come up with.
And I know about the USB thing, but the point is I shouldn’t need to use it if I’ve already got a wireless router in the house.
December 30, 12:30 pm
You don’t need the USB thingy. I’ve got the Linksys WRT54G Router and it works great. Never had any issues. It worked just fine at Ryan’s apartment with his wireless router (you’ll have to ask him what kind he has though), and it worked great for Peter. What router do you have that isn’t working right? And I definitely wouldn’t say they haven’t done a good job implementing their wireless stuff. It’s amazing. Play with a few people in the same room and you can see that. It’s super simple to set up and super simple to use. I’m guessing it’s a good taste of the way the Revolution internet connection stuff will work. I’m guessing you’ve probably got some setting borked or something on your router if your router is in the supported list...or maybe you just n00b’ed it up, heh :P
December 30, 1:47 pm
“It works for me” doesn’t mean it’s implemented well. To me, the fact that they have a list of routers that don’t work means that it is not implemented well. My router is a Linksys WRT54GP2 (which isn’t on the list, and I didn’t find anything by googling it). And the fact that the system freezes when attempting to connect is bad—seems like they could have at least trapped the error and given me a “sorry, can’t connect” message. Wireless with a bunch of people in the same room does work really well, but that’s not what I’m having a problem with right now.
December 30, 1:59 pm
I didn’t say that “it works for me” means it’s implemented well.
It’s not at all surprising that there’s a list of approved routers known to work. There’s a donkey load of routers, they can’t all work 100% correctly. It’s the same thing with embedded firmware, web development, all kinds of things. And yeah, 802.11b’s been around for a while, but so has the DVD, and there’s a lot of really awful DVD players that don’t work correctly.
Yeah, it’d be good if they’d give you an error message that says it can’t connect, but you’re assuming it’s Nintendo’s problem, it could very well be an issue that Linksys has to fix with their firmware. It might be sending bad packets or something because it’s incorrectly identifying the device or some such nonsense.
I’m just playing Devil’s advocate here, but I’m just saying make sure it’s a Nintendo problem before attacking them. I know you love Nintendo, so I wouldn’t be so quick to vilify them, heh.
December 30, 2:58 pm
It may be Linksys’s problem, but the game freezing is not. The software should never freeze. Especially because of something as volatile as network traffic.