HOWTO: Nintendo DS & Orange Livebox
I didn’t even realise until this morning that you could play Nintendo DS games online. I knew you could use the wireless feature to play other people within, say, the same room, but was completely unaware of Nintendo WFC. Upon discovering this I became frustrated at my inability to connect via our Orange Livebox. What follows constitutes a solution for people experiencing similar problems…
***Warning: you will be asked to turn off the hardware firewall on your Orange Livebox. Make sure you have a software firewall activated on your machine – for example Mac OSX Firewall or Windows Vista’s Defender. Disabling a hardware firewall isn’t ideal, but it’s a bit fiddly otherwise. If you’re looking for the specific TCP and UDP ports to open, try this thread.***
I’m using the procedure outlined here, explained in my own inimitable style…
- Make sure you have a software firewall installed and activated on each computer you use with your Orange Livebox.
- Open the administration panel on your Orange Livebox (http://configuration.adsl/index2.html)
- Go to Configuration -> Advanced -> Wireless and select the WEP only option (note: this might affect the ability of computers connected to your Livebox to connect to the Internet)
- Go to Security -> Firewall and select the Low option.
- Go to System Information and leave that page up on your screen.
- On your Nintendo DS, go to a WFC compatible game (e.g. Mario Kart DS) and bring up the Nintendo WFC menu.
- Go to the WFC Settings screen and choose an empty connection (you have a choice of 3).
- Choose Search for an access point; the name of your Orange Livebox should come up. However, you won’t be able to connect as you haven’t entered the WEP key yet!
- Click on the connection you just set up and enter the details from the screen you should still have up on the screen of your computer. Make sure you have Auto-obtain IP address set to No. Enter the WEP key, default gateway (usually 192.168.1.1), Primary DNS (same as default gateway) and IP address (DHCP server end address from your computer’s screen unless you know what you’re doing). Also enter the Subnet Mask (usually 255.255.255.0)
- On the back of your Livebox press Button 1. This enables your Nintendo DS to ‘pair’ with the Livebox. On the DS, click on Test Connection at the top of the menu. It should say Connection Successful. If not, you’ve done something wrong, so go back and double-check!
- Click on Save Settings at the bottom of the menu, then get playing! 🙂
- Finally, now that your DS is connecting properly, change the configuration settings of the computers you connect to the Livebox to use WEP encryption.
If you’re not comfortable with this approach and you’ve got a machine running OSX, you could try the approach outlined here…
On an other advice colonmn is said to disable all security (wpa and wep). but u say to change it to wep, can u explain what that means and the advantages of having that. Thank You
WEP means your network is more secure from attacks by hackers. No security
means anyone can get on your wireless network… :-o
WEP means your network is more secure from attacks by hackers. No securitymeans anyone can get on your wireless network… :-o
Well explained … though it is a pity that Nintendo didn’t have WPA support in the original DS (and in the Wii … maybe that’s changed now in the latest builds).
The DSi at least does support WPA now, in which case people should use it and upgrade their security to WPA.
DSi has WPA support? Well that makes this post all but redundant now then! ;-)