Opine: Riddle Me This: Why Wii WPA?
Nintendo, do you have any idea about online connectivity at all?
Why can I connect with my WII via WPA, but you won’t let the DS do that? I understand your argument about WEP being ubiquitous throughout much of the world. Surely a simple firmware update can allow WPA and WEP in the chipset of the DS? How hard could it be? I’m hoping by the time I get my DS that they’ll allow WPA.
Quite simple actually. The Wii does 802.11g, and the DS only does 802.11b.
WPA is supported in the Wii because WPA officially became recognized as a standard with an amendment made to the 802.11g spec, known to industry specialists as 802.11i. The DS launched when 802.11b was the mainstream standard, and unless Nintendo had a way to upgrade the firmware on the wireless networking chip, there’s no way to get it to support WPA. (This is a wild guess on the firmware. I’ve seen some Wi-Fi cards support WPA all of a sudden after a firmware upgrade, but I’m pretty sure they were all 802.11g.)
Sure, I guess they could have fixed this on the DS Lite, and that has me stumped. It also means anyone with an 802.11n router needs to run their network with no security whatsoever to get their computers, a Wii, and DSes on the same network, which was the main reason why my aunt and uncle refused to switch to N.
You’re right about the DS only being 802.11.b. 802.11b only supports WEP. They should updated the hardware to 80211.g when they had they chance before launching the DS Lite.
An upgrade to WPA from WEP is easy to do. My Xbox USB Wireless unit has been upgrade this way (I did that last week), and I’ve got other WIFI parts around the house that started life as WEP and then upgraded them to WPA with a firmware upgrade.