Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector
Encyclopedia
Nintendo
is a multinational corporation located in Kyoto, Japan. Founded on September 23, 1889 by Fusajiro Yamauchi, it produced handmade hanafuda cards. By 1963, the company had tried several small niche businesses, such as a cab company and a love hotel....
and Buffalo Technology
Melco
Melco Holdings Inc. is a family business founded by Makoto Maki in 1975. The name stands for Maki Engineering Laboratory COmpany...
, which allows Nintendo DSi
Nintendo DSi
The is a handheld game system created by Nintendo and launched in 2008 and 2009 in Japan, North America, PAL territories, and other regions. It is the third iteration of the Nintendo DS, and its primary market rival is Sony's PlayStation Portable...
and Nintendo 3DS
Nintendo 3DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo. The autostereoscopic device is able to project stereoscopic 3D effects without the use of 3D glasses or any additional accessories. The Nintendo 3DS features backward compatibility with Nintendo DS series software, including Nintendo DSi software...
and Wii
Wii
The Wii is a home video game console released by Nintendo on November 19, 2006. As a seventh-generation console, the Wii primarily competes with Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3. Nintendo states that its console targets a broader demographic than that of the two others...
users without a Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi
Wi-Fi or Wifi, is a mechanism for wirelessly connecting electronic devices. A device enabled with Wi-Fi, such as a personal computer, video game console, smartphone, or digital audio player, can connect to the Internet via a wireless network access point. An access point has a range of about 20...
connection or compatible Wi-Fi network to establish one via a broadband
Broadband
The term broadband refers to a telecommunications signal or device of greater bandwidth, in some sense, than another standard or usual signal or device . Different criteria for "broad" have been applied in different contexts and at different times...
-connected PC
Personal computer
A personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
. Inserted into the host PC's USB
Universal Serial Bus
USB is an industry standard developed in the mid-1990s that defines the cables, connectors and protocols used in a bus for connection, communication and power supply between computers and electronic devices....
port, the connector functions with Nintendo DS
Nintendo DS
The is a portable game console produced by Nintendo, first released on November 21, 2004. A distinctive feature of the system is the presence of two separate LCD screens, the lower of which is a touchscreen, encompassed within a clamshell design, similar to the Game Boy Advance SP...
, Wii, DSi, 3DS permitting the user to connect to the Internet to play Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection games and various other online functionality. The product was the best selling Nintendo accessory to date, according to the official Nintendo site on 15 November 2007, but was discontinued in the same month until further notice. On September 8, 2008, Nintendo announced the Nintendo Wi-Fi Network Adapter, an 802.11g
IEEE 802.11g-2003
IEEE 802.11g-2003 or 802.11g is an amendment to the IEEE 802.11 specification that extended throughput to up to 54 Mbit/s using the same 2.4 GHz band as 802.11b. This specification under the marketing name of Wi-Fi has been implemented all over the world...
wireless router
Wireless router
A Wireless router is a device that performs the functions of a router but also includes the functions of a wireless access point and a network switch. They are commonly used to allow access to the Internet or a computer network without the need for a cabled connection. It can function in a wired...
/bridge
Wireless bridge
A wireless bridge is a hardware component used to connect two or more network segments which are physically and logically separated. It does not necessarily always need to be a hardware device, as some operating systems provide software to bridge different protocols...
which serves a similar purpose.
Functionality
The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is a rebranded Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54-YB (Although this is often confused for the Buffalo WLI-U2-KG54-AI - the two adapters are almost identical, and only differ in that the latter features flash memory to allow for auto installation) which is based on the RalinkRalink
Ralink Technology, Corp. is a Wi-Fi chipset manufacturer which is mainly known for their WLAN chipsets. Now headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Ralink was founded in 2001 in Cupertino, California and it was bought in 2009 by the taiwanese company MediaTek....
RT2570 chipset and as such is different from most other Wi-Fi adapters in that it can operate as a software access point (also referred to as a soft AP). Few adapters can do this under Windows, as at the time of the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector's release, Windows lacked both the software necessary to configure a soft AP and capable drivers for natively supported hardware. By bundling a soft AP compatible device with their own proprietary software, Nintendo was able to overcome this and at the same time greatly simplify the otherwise complicated process of putting a supported device into soft AP mode, configuring it, and routing Internet traffic over it.
In addition, a number of community developed tools and drivers exist which expand the functionality of the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector beyond its initial design. While not officially supported by Nintendo, the USB Connector can function as a standard wireless adapter by using modified Ralink
Ralink
Ralink Technology, Corp. is a Wi-Fi chipset manufacturer which is mainly known for their WLAN chipsets. Now headquartered in Hsinchu, Taiwan, Ralink was founded in 2001 in Cupertino, California and it was bought in 2009 by the taiwanese company MediaTek....
or Buffalo Technology drivers, and can be used to send official game demos and homebrew software to the Nintendo DS through the Wireless Multi Boot (WMB) protocol.
Criticism
There have been a number of complaints and criticisms made of the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector since its release. While the device works as advertised for the majority of users, there have been some complaints brought up about its design and functionality. These users often fall outside of the target audience for the Wi-Fi USB Connector (namely Microsoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
users without a pre-existing wireless network or the technical expertise to configure one).
Proprietary authentication
One criticism of the Wi-Fi USB Connector is that it uses a proprietary authentication mechanism. Because of this, the Wi-Fi USB Connector works only with approved devices, which at this time is limited to the DS and Wii consoles. This behavior was an intentional design decision on the part of Nintendo, as it prevents outside parties from connecting to the Wi-Fi USB Connector with their computers and accessing the user's Internet connection or computer.While the Wi-Fi USB Connector can be modified to circumvent this, the modification is beyond the capability of most users and is naturally unsupported by Nintendo.
Operating system support
Initially, the Wi-Fi USB Connector only supported MicrosoftMicrosoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
Windows XP
Windows XP
Windows XP is an operating system produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops and media centers. First released to computer manufacturers on August 24, 2001, it is the second most popular version of Windows, based on installed user base...
. A main concern at that time was the lack of support for older versions of Windows, principally Windows 2000
Windows 2000
Windows 2000 is a line of operating systems produced by Microsoft for use on personal computers, business desktops, laptops, and servers. Windows 2000 was released to manufacturing on 15 December 1999 and launched to retail on 17 February 2000. It is the successor to Windows NT 4.0, and is the...
. After the introduction of the Windows Vista
Windows Vista
Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...
operating system, however, criticism shifted to lack of support for the new platform. Though Vista drivers were eventually released by Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of America, it was two years after the first XP drivers were available and several months after Vista's launch.
It is possible to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector as a USB Wi-Fi NIC to connect to other access points under Linux and BSD when using the appropriate drivers. Notably, Debian
Debian
Debian is a computer operating system composed of software packages released as free and open source software primarily under the GNU General Public License along with other free software licenses. Debian GNU/Linux, which includes the GNU OS tools and Linux kernel, is a popular and influential...
and Debian-based systems such as Ubuntu
Ubuntu (operating system)
Ubuntu is a computer operating system based on the Debian Linux distribution and distributed as free and open source software. It is named after the Southern African philosophy of Ubuntu...
have out of the box support for the chipset in the device.
Additionally, there is currently no official support for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Windows XP Professional x64 Edition
Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition released on April 25, 2005 is an edition of Windows XP for x86-64 personal computers. It is designed to use the expanded 64-bit memory address space provided by the x86-64 architecture....
, or driver for the 64-bit versions of Windows XP or Windows Vista; there are only drivers for 32-bit versions of these operating systems. Also, there is currently no official support for Windows 7. Except it works on Windows 7 when the installation compatibility is set to Windows XP or Windows Vista. (32 Bit only)
Internet connection sharing
The core functionality of the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is provided by Windows' Internet Connection SharingInternet Connection Sharing
Internet Connection Sharing is the use of a device with Internet access such as 3G cellular service, broadband via Ethernet, or other Internet gateway as an access point for other devices...
(ICS) feature, which allows a Windows computer to act as a router and automatically configure client devices for Internet access. Unfortunately, due to limitations in ICS, there are a number of caveats with this method.
Like the Wi-Fi USB Connector software itself, ICS offers the user no configurable options. This means that ICS may not function as expected, or at all, in complex network environments. In addition, Windows cannot handle multiple ICS configurations simultaneously, or in other words, only a single application or network device can use and configure ICS at one time. This means that if your network is currently relying on ICS or you use software that utilizes it (such as Windows Media Center Extender for the Xbox 360
Xbox 360
The Xbox 360 is the second video game console produced by Microsoft and the successor to the Xbox. The Xbox 360 competes with Sony's PlayStation 3 and Nintendo's Wii as part of the seventh generation of video game consoles...
), you may not be able to use the Wi-Fi USB Connector at all.
Software firewall compatibility
Though not an innate fault with the Wi-Fi USB Connector itself, due to the nature of the device, a software firewallFirewall (computing)
A firewall is a device or set of devices designed to permit or deny network transmissions based upon a set of rules and is frequently used to protect networks from unauthorized access while permitting legitimate communications to pass....
like those commonly installed on Microsoft Windows computers hosting the Wi-Fi USB Connector will interfere with its operation. To alleviate this issue, the user must allow the software full access to the Internet, or manually specify acceptable port ranges to allow through the firewall; depending on how that particular firewall is configured.
Unfortunately, some firewall products (like ZoneAlarm, and Windows Live OneCare
Windows Live OneCare
Windows Live OneCare was a computer security and performance enhancement service developed by Microsoft for Microsoft Windows. A core technology of OneCare was the multi-platform RAV , which Microsoft purchased from GeCAD Software Srl in 2003, but subsequently discontinued...
) are incompatible with the Wi-Fi USB Connector software and must be either uninstalled or disabled, leaving the computer open to possible attack from external sources. The user's only option in this scenario is to risk connecting to the Internet unprotected, or install a different firewall product.
Network topology
A common complaint from more advanced users is the complete lack of user-configurable options in the Wi-Fi USB Connector software and installer. For the novice user this is seen as a much-welcomed advantage of the Wi-Fi USB Connector over a traditional wireless router, but for those users who wish to use the device in a more complicated network environment, it can be an insurmountable obstacle.For example, the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector will cause an IP conflict if an existing network is using the 192.168.0.x or 192.168.1.x IP schemes, both common IP ranges used in consumer routers.
Packaging
The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector includes a USB extension cable, a manual, and a software CD. It is recommended that the latest version of the Wi-Fi USB Connector software should be downloaded and installed rather than using the version on the CD, as important updates have been made in the newer versions. Devices shipped with software driver versions below 1.05 are incompatible with Windows Vista until updated.Discontinuation
While Nintendo hasn't come forward explaining the reason for the discontinuation of the device, manufacturers Buffalo Technology are reportedly no longer licensed to distribute it due to a successful recent lawsuit by the Australian Government's technology research agency CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation). As a result, the company has been prevented from trading in any products adhering to the 802.11a/g standards in the US, including the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB connector.Nintendo, however, only states on their website that the device is discontinued and says that a standard wireless router should work with the Wii. Here is their official statement:
"Please note: The Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector has been discontinued until further notice. As an alternative for on-line access, Wii owners can use a standard wireless router, or the Wii LAN Adapter such as UAWIFI UA3 from manufacturer http://www.uawifi.com ."