Wii Shop (WiFi) connection problem… solved

July 5th, 2007 Submitted by: Adrian

As part of the whole process of enjoying the unit, I had to try every single feature on the Wii. One of the problems I encountered since obtaining the unit was a problem with connecting to my WiFi Router. When I first brought the Wii back from the shop, they have already downloaded the “Internet Channel” from the “Wii Shop”. Detecting the WiFi from the unit was easily done. Even a manual setup was easily done. Both yielded positive connection test results.

Problem was this, how am I able to connect to the “Internet Channel” but was unable to connect to the “Wii Shop”. What this means is that if the shop where I purchased the Wii from did not download the Internet Channel Opera Browser for me, I had no way of doing it myself since I could not get connected to the Wii Shop in the first place to download it. Confusing? Well… basically, my unit even though could surf the internet via the Internet Channel via the Opera Browser, it was unable to connect to the Wii Shop.

After much surfing around, I found I wasn’t alone in this matter… and after lots of testing, I (think) I finally managed to find the problem which had something to do with my SMC2804WBR Router setting. First of all, I have to say that the WiFi connection on the Wii is very tempermental. It’s not as solidly built as other WiFi equipments. I had checked various settings like:

1. Broadcast SSiD naming (mine is named with periods in the middle of the name, so I thought that affected the Wii’s ability). I changed it to a single name without special characters and tried…. but this was not the cause
2. I had to disable Firewall (Mac Address Filtering in particular) as I thought that affected the Wii
3. I limited the Channel to 1 (as advised over the many forums out there) and it seems to work for me. I have yet to try another Channel. But this is also not the Main problem (though this was a setting I had to change on my existing router)
4. Transmission Rate. This I deduce to be the problem. When I used AUTO, it seems to have problems. When I used 1Mbps, it also had problems. However when I set it at 2Mbps, the connection to the Wii shop was very consistent. So what does this mean? The Wii has compatibility problems with my SMC WiFi Router. My router was unable to set the Transmission Rate for the Wii so I had to stick it at 2Mbps before the connection was stable.

Next… I’m going to try to change the Channel to AUTO and see if that affects the connection. However I’m glad that its working now and I think I’ll save the testing for another day. I have “wasted” a good 3 days or so trying to troubleshoot this problem with numerous reboot of the Router and Wii. Luckily they’re not as slow as Windows is to boot up else I would be bald from pulling my hair out of frustration!

Hooray for a working Wii! The WiFi on it still sucks however. Not as problem free as I would have thought. Proof of this problem is all over the net… even on Nintendo’s support website.

Anyway for the sake of those who might have problems with their Wii WiFi, you can try the following: 

• SSiD Broadcast can be On or Off (Better ON for easy searching for an access point else you have to set up the connection MANUALLY)
• SSiD can be nammed with periods in them like a domain name. It doesn’t matter but its best to stick with just AlphaNumeric Characters.
• CHANNEL ID - Set to 11 as 1 did not work for me
• TRANSMISSION RATE - 2 Mbps (maximum). Anything more or less seems to create problems to the Wii Shop
• WIRELESS MODE: Long Range Mixed (11b + 11g) *The Wii only supports 11b. 
• G NITRO: Enabled (Without Problems but you might want to try to turn yours off)
• FIREWALL MAC ADDRESS FILTERING can be switched on. But ensure your Wii’s MAC Address is entered into your Router

That’s about it! I wish you luck on your setup and hope this article helps. Hmm… time to get online and send my Mii running around to my friends’ units.

Entry Filed under: Nintendo Wii