Nintendo DS wireless…

So, I travelled the world, and my trusty DS kept me, in the main, in contact with the world via Nintendo Web Browser and small chunks of free Wifi. Now, it was great, but i’m home now, what now for my trusty DS? Well… Despite my house having 5 Apple Mac’s, all with Wifi, I felt compelled to add my DS to the ever growing list of wireless thingymajobbies. It turns out, it was alot more effort than I expected, and the results… Well I’ll get to that.

So, firstly, the Nintendo DS only uses ‘WEP’, as opposed to the more widely adopted ‘WPA’ as a means for wireless protection. So, I had to change my Airport Extreme base station, back to WEP. I used the same password, but the DS wasn’t taking my WEP password. Annoyingly it doesn’t tell me why it won’t accept it, but it won’t. I do some research and read suggestions the WEP password ought to be between 10 and 26 letters, depending on the level of encryption. So I use my same password, and whack in a few odd characters to create a 10 character long password. STILL, the DS just sits and laughs at me, as I look bewildered by it’s refusion to ‘Just Work’ (I’m used to Apple gear, remember?). I decide, this won’t beat me, and again, more research (Thanks Mr. Google) reveals there are certain limitations within ‘WEP’ I should of been made aware of. Use characters 0-9 and letters, A-F, that’s all. Use anything else, and devices like the Nintendo DS will tell you the WEP key is invalid; why it can’t tell you this in the error, I’ll never know! Maybe most people who consider themselves ‘Network moguls’ would of known this, but surely the majority of DS users, ‘Mere mortals’ wouldn’t?

So finally, I get it working, what of the Nintendo DS Browser back at home? Well, like I said, it was great on my travels, whilst in hostels on a very small budget, the opportunity to soak up some free Wifi was a godsend. Alas, when you’re thousands of miles away this does/did feel amazing, but now? I didn’t realize the Nintendo DS Browser was so slow! Not only slow, but it’s not the nicest user experience, either. I don’t rue buying it, it served a valid purpose for me, but for ‘other people’ I can see why people would be frustrated by it. So my recommendation? If your travelling around the world and you have a DS, great… Otherwise, well… You’ve been warned.

 

Comments are closed.