Binaryspiral

Problems have been plaguing my Wii to the point of being useless.

Symptoms include: intermittent connectivity; no connectivity; random error codes ranging from unable to connect to your router to you have no internet connection; all while being able to easily see the wireless access point and connect to it.

It all started when I upgraded my wireless access point to a Linksys WRT54GS router. My old D-Link would spontaneously reboot itself when more than one wireless device was connected and I was using processor intensive WPA wireless encryption. Now that we have two laptops, a Wii, and a few other devices that can use WPA2 – it seemed the thing to use.

I set the WRT54GS to use WPA2 wireless encryption, changed the admin password, and changed the name of the SSID.

All the laptops connected fine. My smartphone connected fine. The Wii could see the AP (with a green, three bar signal icon) and displayed the proper encryption method… but would intermittently fail connection tests. If it passed a test, it would fail almost every time I launched an online channel.

After further troubleshooting I reset the wireless to:

G only. No change.
B only. No change.
Mixed. No change.

Tried every channel from 1 – 12, no difference. All the while my two laptops with Intel 802.11 a/b/g wireless are working flawlessly.

So I powered up an old 802.11b access point that only has WEP, and I left that disabled. The Wii connected fine, test passed, and I could browse with the internet channel. I wasn’t going to leave an open AP on in my neighborhood.

So now I’ve confirmed something is amiss with the Wii.

Solution:

I took my 12 character long alphanumeric password and shortened it to 8 characters. Ding! WPA2 and WPA will work just fine.

I have yet to test > 12 or < 8 character passwords, but right now I’m comfortable with WPA2 rotating the encryption keys every 3600 seconds with an 8 character non-dictionary word password.

If you’re having the same problem, try an 8 character password using random letters and numbers. Even though it’ll be shorter than I’m usually comfortable using, making it hard to guess will keep you safe.

So just how many wireless technologies can you use at the same time? A few weeks ago Woot! had a killer sale on a set of bluetooth headsets from Kyocera. At $25 + $5S&H I couldn’t pass up the deal. After they arrived I realized that my laptop didn’t have the newer EDR bluetooth chip that allows for high speed bluetooth connections… no wonder it takes for ever to transfer files.

But my Treo 700w does and with a recent firmware update from Palm, it added the stereo headset profile (score!). So now I have a phone on Verizon’s EVDO high speed network and a set of bluetooth headphones streaming music from the shoutcast network. I’m typing on my laptop connected to an 802.11g wireless network while Kathy chats on a 5.8Ghz digital cordless phone. And to top it off, I’m wearing a watch that is synchronized to the atomic clock on Boulder Co.

In the last few years the technology has changed so fast and introduced so many new ways to use existing tech that it’s mind boggling. Even as I type this, an RSS story pops up on my desktop describing a new use for wireless USB. Wireless USB – 400Mbit short range (30 feet or so) full duplex serial data connection. Even five years ago we were in awe of a wired connection that was that fast.

Yeah, I know the wrist watch is a stretch… it’s only receiving an update once a day at 3am.

In a Verizon Wireless press release yesterday, Verizon will be keeping its stores open until 9pm to show customers their multimedia phones and the functionality they gain when connected to a faster network.

This blogger is an Apple fan, but knows that if you base a device on network applications for customization – you better have a fat pipe available for folks to access those. Sorry AT&T, but EDGE doesn’t cut it.