I really wonder how the technical discussions went around in Tokyo when the Nintendo DS was created.

“So, okay. We have this cool handheld. Let’s add some Wi-Fi to it! Imagine thousands of players playing games with each other across the world! Without wires.”
“Great idea! But Wi-Fi.. That’s like, hundreds of standards.”
“Well.. Let’s see. 812.11g – that’s this new-fangled 54 Mbit thingie. That’s more capacity than we’ll ever need. 802.11b – an 11 Mbit standard. That sounds a bit better.”
“Hey, what about 812.11a?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Granted, it uses the 5 GHz band instead of 2.4 GHz like 802.11b and g, so it doesn’t have to abide by the same FCC regulations as those, and there’s less cluttering in that range; but we want people to be able to play the DS on common Wi-Fi hotspots, and the 2.4 GHz band is what’s used most of the time, since it has farther penetration than 5 GHz radio.”

This is where the conversation starts to go all weird.

“If we want people to be able to play it everywhere, we want to maximize the compatibility. Isn’t there something even less demanding than 802.11b?”
“Oh, sure! There’s the original 802.11 2 Mbit specification – we could go for that one!”
“You’re a genius!”
“I know! Let’s celebrate with sake and karaoke!”
“First, let’s type more exalted sentences with lots of exclamation marks!”
“Yes! Let’s do that! Wai wai!”

So, basically.. What Nintendo has done is to make the DS into a bastard thing from hell; it’s supposed to be able to run anywhere due to the low requirements, but instead it barely works with any out-of-the-box products. It demands a configuration with basic rates of 1 and 2 Mbit, in comparison to 1, 2, 5.5 and 11 that’s common for 802.11b. (802.11g is decently similar to 802.11b – it just adds extended rates that are available upon request from g clients.)

In many (most?) Wi-Fi access points this isn’t really a technical problem. Most Cisco products have an excellent web GUI where you can select rates, for example. D-Link supposedly has similar configuration possibilities on most products, but I haven’t seen it myself. Access points whose firmware are based on Conexant code (the ISOS operating system) are worse off; they need a firmware update where a new profile is added.

Something that’s more annoying is the speed limitations. You know what happens when an 802.11b client is introduced into an 802.11g network, right? It slows down the entire network, since slot times must match the lowest common denominator. (Newer products might have better solutions to this.)

In other words: Nintendo has managed to create a wonderful handheld that slows down the network and creates configuration problems. Great job. It must have been a cost issue – otherwise the far better solution would have been to implement 802.11b/g.

And don’t get me started on their choice to use WEP instead of WPA or WPA2…

This entry was posted on Friday, May 19th, 2006 at 12:26 pm and is filed under Games, Networks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.