Last Saturday, Massive mat and I stood inline with a bunch of other geeks to get Nintendo Wiis. I will write a blog post about that, and about how fun the Wii is to play, but for now, im going to bitch about it for a minute…
One of the big reasons that I wanted to get a Wii was the fact that you are able to play EVERY nintendo game format on it. NES, SNES, N64, GameCube, and now Wii games! To play the old games you have to join their version of XBox Live, and buy them.
The Wii is so futuristic, that it doesnt have an ethernet port on it, no no, wifi is the way nintendo wii rolls!
I wanted to buy some of these old games and play them, but you have to connect to a wifi connection first. Not a problem, I have a Linksys WRT54GL router upstairs serving out some 802.11g love.
The Wii would see the access point, I would enter the WPA password, then the Wii would think about connecting then spit back and error, "ERROR 52230 contact support.nintendo.com". SUCK!
Ok, so I go to the nintendo site, search forever and then find a place to enter my error code. It returns something stupid about trying changing the channel that the router broadcasts on. Weird, but I try it… no LUCK.
I searched up and down the web seeing people with similar problems to mine. I couldnt figure it out for the life of me. All my other wifi gear worked fine.
I did a little research on what was actually inside the Wii as far as a wireless card. Thats when I found this site,
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.asp?p=677908&seqNum=2&rl=1 where they actually took a Wii apart.
I found my answer there in the form of a simple statement "The 802.11 card only operates in the 2412-2462GHz range. In 802.11b mode"
802.11b MODE! WTF!
I dont own any 802.11b equipment, only 802.11g. 802.11b is shitty and slow compared to G. NO WHERE IN THE NINTENDO MANUALS OR ON THE NINTENTDO SITE DOES IT SAY THAT IT ONLY OPERATES AT 802.11b.
Why would nintendo do such a stupid thing? B is 5 times slower then G! Who the hell rund 802.11b equipment? My Damn cell phone has 802.11G support in it! Im more pissed that they didnt print it anywhere in the manual. They talk about WEP and WPA, but not the fucking protocol they use for the connection!
So I logged into my router and put it on Mixed (B/G) Mode, and what do you know, the Wii was able to connect to the nintendo server and get the updates that I needed to connect to their store.
So if you are having problems connecting your Wii to some WiFi. make sure that the router is set to mixed mode.
Nintendo, thank you for a great machine. Screw you for putting in a slow wifi card and not telling people more details about it.
I hope someone else can finally get their Wii online after reading this post.














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Are you ever going to be downloading GBs worth of data to your Wii ? Doubtful.
This is a non-issue really. Not everyone in the world wants to shell out 2x the money to get 802.11g, especially if they don’t need or use the bandwidth. A ton of people still use 802.11b, myself included.
Unless you’re shoving massive amounts of data across your LAN (like streaming movies, but who does that over wireless anyhow?), chances are you have absolutely no use for the extra bandwidth. Your net connection is nowhere near able to saturate g, and most can’t saturate b.
Including 802.11g equipment in the Wii would most certainly have killed the $250 price point. Seriouslly, what’d you expect from the cheapest console out?
I will concede the point that they should have printed or included this information somewhere, but as for 802.11b vs. 802.11g hardware in the Wii, Nintendo certainly made the correct choice.
Right, I dont care what the connection is. I would just think that for online play, and faster downloads they would have gone with G. I understand the pricing issue though. Regardless, I wish they would of told me some place. I would have been fine with it, and been able to configure my router without doing any research.
Note that the article actually says:
“In 802.11b mode, the card can obtain a 20.07dBm or 101.62 mW output”, and not that it only operates in 11.b mode.
In fact, the tech docs linked in the article say the wi-fi card is compatible with 802.11b/g.
Mind you, I’m still trying to get my Wii to work with my WRT54GL, which is how I found this blog. Mixed mode hasn’t worked for me.
An update – I am working now, in mixed mode (G only did not work). Still, the docs for the card do say it’s G compatible, although I wonder if that is a way of saying that G supports B cards.
I also have WEP on.
My particular problem was a mistyped MAC address in my MAC address filter.
I tried my access point in mixed b&g mode, with WEP and it would still not work, so i disabled WEP and did MAC filtering, and it worked a charm. I know the access code was correct, because i used the same on my DS at the same time!
I don’t care about only mac filtering, there is an open access point within range of my house, so anyone wanting bandwidth will go there!
After waiting an extra day to get my wii because gamesation told me i was on the second list of per-orders. When i did get my wii i rushed home to try out wii weather. I followed the same steps I used to set up my nintendo ds, when i started to fell happy it said testing connection and then i want about 30 seconds only to see error code 51332 sometimes i see 51330 and 51331. change the settings on my BELKIN F5D7231-4 wireless router i was still getting the same thing even when i tried turbo mode off.
After waiting an extra day to get my wii because gamesation told me i was on the second list of per-orders. When i did get my wii i rushed home to try out wii weather. I followed the same steps I used to set up my nintendo ds, when i started to fell happy it said testing connection and then i want about 30 seconds only to see error code 51332 sometimes i see 51330 and 51331. I even tried changing the settings on my BELKIN F5D7231-4 but i still got the same thing other than that the wii is great.
Can anyone help? I have a weired problem. If I go online with my Wii it works fine./ However, If I go from one online app to another (for example, weather to Wii Shop) I lose my Wii net connection and I have to reboot my router before I can get it back online again.
Its a Dlink router and its in mixed mode. Any ideas?
I also have a Belkin F5D7231-4 wireless router and have NEVER been able get my Wii to connect. So far I’ve gotten error codes 51330 and 51331. Here are the following things I have tried:
-Moving the router and Wii within 2 feet of each other.
-Switching to channels 1,6,11.
-Leaving the router set to Auto (the equivalent of mixed).
-Adding my Wii’s MAC address to the router’s filtering.
-Manually connecting using my IP, Subnet Mask, Default Gateway, and DNS Server info.
I also have the highest speed of Internet offered by my ISP.
If anyone knows other ways to help, PLEASE let me know!
I have a friend who had a lot of problems getting his wii to connect to his router. None of the things i discovered helped helped him to connect. He ended up calling nintendo and was told that his wii and many others are defective, and need to have the wifi portion of the serviced. You might want to call nintendo and see if your wii needs to be physically repared.
Thanks guy! I’ve spent hours trying to get my Wii hooked up to my WEP connection, and couldn’t figure out why it wouldn’t connect. Your solution works. Thanks again
for the belkin F5D7231-4 change the setting from auto to 54G LRS that worked for me
i have a belkin 54g and it wont connect to my wii help please? it says connection but it always give errors
great post
check out http://www.wiierrorcodes.com
im getting error code 51332. the wierd thing is it when i test connection it says connection test successfull but when trying to agree with the contract agreement it says unable to connect to the internet. anyone help?
My Wii connected to the net fine for the first few weeks. But over the past week or so I’ve been getting some of the above mentioned errors and can not connect at all.
I will be mighty pissed if the WiFi is defective as mentioned above and I have to send it back. The Wii experience has be beautiful up until now. But combine this WiFi prob with the multitude of glitches in Rayman.R.R and its starting to dissapoint me. All my other Nintendo products have worked flawlessly.
I have a Belkin F5D7231 -4 Mode and had been wandereing about this for ages but not only did I change to channel 11 and use mixed mode I disabled Turbo mode this has seemed to have fixed the problem so thanks for the mixed mode tip and help I hope turning off turbo mode works for some of you too
Regards Rotten ICE
when I say mixed mode I mean 54g Auto in the settings
and uncheck the turbo mode box
hi im lost with the nintendo wii anyone help with changin the mixed gb mode and the turbo mode i dont understand how it change it on the pc do i have to go to my network place to changin it or i dont understand this stuff. all i know is that it grants me the connection but it wont connect it says error code:52140 & several other ones but still samething im sure. oh i forget to mention that it worked for me befor with the internet channel that i downloaded but i tryed to connect several days after but it wouldnt work. i even uninstalled it and installed it and yeah pretty much stick in a rout now.
“The 802.11 card only operates in the 2412-2462GHz range. In 802.11b mode”
I managed to connect after reading the post. i have mixed (B/G) network, previously set on channel 11 – 2,467Ghz. Changed to channel 4 – 2.432 Ghz and worked ok.
Ok, I got my wii this morning and it wouldnt find the access point, even though my laptop was in the same room with a full signal. So after an hour of fiddling, I changed the channel to 11, then disabled the WEP, went back to the wii and it found it.
I then had to manually enter the ip subnet mask etc, but it works.
So my guess is to leave your wiii just running for a few mins , change the channel to 11 and tunr wep off till it finds it, then enable it after so people dont steal your internet.
I have the Belkin F5D7231 -4 and switching to 54g LRS in the wireless settings sorted the Wii out straight away. Before hand i was really stuck, cheers!
I have a Netgear running channel G (802.11g) and got the same error. Logged into the router and just entered the MAC number for the Wii and assigned it to an unused IP address (under DHCP). No problems since then, even did a software update over the wi-fi connection (took just under 5 minutes to complete).
Thanks for the tip Nomaan,
I’ve got the the belkin F5D7231-4 and I was pulling my hair out getting the 51330 constantly. Changing the setting from auto to 54G LRS worked a treat.
Before contacting nintendo about dodgy units I would try if you know someone with another router possibly someone with a working wii over wireless.If it works then good look getting it to work with your router mine worked fine at first but having lots of problems now.
I managed to get the Wii connected by turning off Mac restriction (even though wii Mac address was in the allowed list it would not work)
Nomaan Says:
January 25th, 2007 at 11:24 am
for the belkin F5D7231-4 change the setting from auto to 54G LRS that worked for me
Thx nomaan changing to 54G LRS worked for me
I was having initial issues of using my wii online with wireless, one of the issues was first the 53110 soemthing like that in the manuel it stated that it might be due to my router using 192.168.0.x or 1.x and that i should change the ip block to 192.168.2.x did that but did not fix the issue, so reading on i also read that it might be a Wep issue, so i changed my router to use WAP2 and the wii to use WAP2-PSK i put in the password bam, it worked, go to try and read the news weather it says i need to update, try to update and i get to about 10% before it fails with some error i didn’t bother to read.
I later traded some games in and bought the Bandi USB-To-LAN adapter for the wii and used that with out issue.
I also have a WRT54GL and the only thing the Wii-Fi ended up doing is making it so that my laptop disconnects randomly now from the wireless. All of the problems i now have on my laptop appeared after i started tring to get my Wii online.
changed to 54g LRS and it worked a treat
Just to add my own 2 cents, I finally got mine working today after on and off trials over a month or so. With a Linksys WRT54G ver3, the 4 things that finally seem to have made it work are:
1)Setting to channel 11
2)Enabling Mixed Mode
3)Making sure that Basic Rate 1-2Mbs is set
4)Changing it to Router mode (since I am not using it as my Internet Gateway – I have a D-Link for that)
I thought I had done this, but apparently not all at the same time. Hope it helps any others out there. Cheers
Where can I change the setting from auto to 54G LRS? :O
Just a thanks – I got my Wii aaaages back, and the WiFi neevr worked. I have the mentioned Belkin F5D7231-4, and changing to 54G LRS worked STRAIGHT AWAY.
Thanks so much.
DDDDD
I too have the belkin router; chnaged to 54g LRS and worked straight away!
This is the only place I have found this particular solution on the web. All the other tips (chnage channel, MAC address etc) all failed.
Well done, keep up the good work!
After experiencing tremendous frustration configuring a NetGear WGR614 v7 to operate with the Wii and recieving several unable to connect to the Internet I hit error 51331, which upon googling landed me here.
Thank goodness it did. First I repositioned the router to a higher area and raised the antenna, since the Wii was having difficulty locating the wireless network.
Then after reading these wonderful posts, I found changing the Channel in Wireless settings to 4, solved my problem. The Wii is currently updating and I have my fingers crossed. Thanks!!!
Guys, thanks a lot for this post!
I have a Netgear FWG114P and I got crazy in connecting. Then I set to wireless Mixed mode (b &G) and no results, then B only and no results!
Finally I got the ight parameter: in the Wireless settings select LONG preamble!
Now works great even in Mixed mode and properly updated itself!
Holy Sh__! You did it ! ! I have spent an entire day changing & resetting & SCREWING UP everything on my network (using a Micorsoft wireless MN700 router)….except for g & b! I just assumed that Nintendo would use the highest speed …wow, was I wrong! A BIG THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU ! ! ! !
Scott,
Tampa Fla
where do i find my belkin settings?
Hey guys….I want to just say a big THANK YOU. me and my partner tried for hours to get our wii to work…its been driving us mad. Then i read on here to change the belkin router to 54 LRS….and it worked….woohoo..I just hope that more people read this and get their Wii working. :0)
Has anyone had any trouble inputting the security key? I am running WPA TKIP and I type in the key. when I get to the last letter it will not accept it. I have checked and rechecked that I do not have a typo but can’t get the last letter in.
Router was already set to mixed mode. Changing channels worked for me (from 6 to 11)!
I found this blog looking for a fix for my connection issues with a Netgear router. Mine didn’t work in mixed mode, so I took the step to just go to B mode only.
Bam. Worked.
Thank you for giving a little insight. You pointed the car in the right direction, I just had to step on the gas a little harder.
Thanks!
I got things working using the auto-detect option on my Wii. That worked much better than setting things up manually.
I have a Dlink WBR-1310 i can’t seem to get it to work anyone got any things to try i try some of this and it did not work.
Don’t under estimate the power of the mighty reboot!!I spent hours trying to get my Wii to get along with my Belkin F5D7230-4, and nothing on this blog helped either – until I rebooted my comp, router and Wii. I couldn’t tell you which of the suggestions aboved fixed the problem because I set 54G LRS, switched to channel 11, turned off MAC filtering (since adding the Wii made no difference), turned off the router firewall, etc, all while standing on one foot and poking my tongue out!
It’s working now so thanks to everyone for the help!
MAC filtering won’t save you from a hacker – it really is easy to spoof MAC addresses. It’ll keep the casual person off your network – but so will WPA.
The problem with running your access point in “mixed mode” is that your “G” wireless clients will see a marked speed decrease because the access point downshifts to accommodate the older 802.11b clients.
I just added a new 802.11g WRT-GS access point and enabled WPA2 (needed a hotfix from microsoft for my XP Pro laptop to hookup… wtf M$, couldn’t you push that out with an update?!).
Oh, and my Wii hooked right up to my 802.11g running in G only mode using WPA2 AES encryption – using the automatic setup.
You must have SSID broadcast on for the Wii to be able to discover the access point. After that you can shut it off if you like.
I’m struggling to get this Wii wirelessly connectted. Both my son’s and daughters DS lite’s connect fine wirelessly. The Wii using all the instructions from nintendo website didn’t work either as well from here. I know the wireless works fine on the Wii (tested on another wireless router) I’m using Wep and tried with and without a Mac address as well as diabling it all and leaving it open. I’m tempted just to get another wireless router. Any last suggestions?
i couldnt connect to my wireless access point with the Motorola SBG900 initially. I was using WEP channel 8. I read this message board and switched to using channel 11 and it worked great !!
After having my Wii working for ages, will from release date, it decided not to work, tried many tricks, and found out changing from channel 1 to 6 sorted it. How strange.
TBird, a MAC address filter is a false sense of security. It’s trivial for someone to collect packets on your network and retrieve an address that will pass the filter (through spoofing).
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