Erik:

Rating

What can I say, this adapter is inexpensive and it works reliably, all the time.

The Nintendo Wii Wireless has a problem in certain scenarios. They expect a basic rate on wireless set on 1 or 2mbps. In most consumer grade products this isn’t a problem, as the products often don’t allow you to tweak that setting, nor does the consumer know why they would want to.

If you happen to run something non-consumer, or DD-wrt or openwrt, or really have issues supporting legacy 802.11b, you may not have the 1/2mbps data rates enabled. (Some consumer based products do allow you to set ‘g only’ or ‘a/g only’ or ‘a/g/n only’ now.)

For me, I only have 11g rates, 11a rates, and 11n rates enabled. The Nintendo Wii absolutely won’t work with it’s current firmware, if you don’t support 1/2mb data rates (which are part of 802.11b). So if you’ve enabled “11g only” on your router, or specifically disabled those data rates, you’re out of luck.

I bought this adapter to get around it, because I didn’t want to have to support 11b rates, for a device that has an 802.11b/g card in it. (The implications are that your overall wireless will be slower when devices are connected at b, as it has to implement protection mechanisms for backward compatibility)

So to be clear, although the device ‘supports’ 802.11g data rates (and it does, and works with them). The initial message exchange, it only listens for beacons and probe responses on the 1/2mb 802.11b data rates. Which is pretty amazing, as that is a hold over from devices that are already considered “old legacy”. Very few devices today still have that restriction, and I can’t think of any that are as new as the wii that still have that restriction. A simple software update would fix this problem if Nintendo were interested.

M. Elder:

Rating

Much faster than the wireless router I was using, and nice-and-cheap. Easy setup: Simply go into connections, clear out any old connections, turn on wired connetion, and your good to go.

Great for the price.

A. Stagg:

Rating

My wireless router sits within a few feet of my Wii. I saw no reason why I should be using a wireless connection, when a wired connection is typically faster and more reliable (and is one less possible source of device conflicts).

This worked perfectly. I purchased this on one of the Black Friday sales, so it was much cheaper than the normal price. I figured I had nothing to lose. But, now that I am using it, I think it’s a good value at the current price too.

Simple to use:

1. Plug it into one of the USB ports in the back of the Wii.

2. Connect the device to your router using a Cat-5 line (not included).

3. Go into the Wii Internet menu and configure the internet connection for “wired”.

If it’s working, you’ll see a blue LED on the device blink as it is accessing the internet. Hardest part was opening the package!