I wanted to setup my niece's Nintendo DS to operate thru my Wi-Fi AP (cable modem). But it seems that the Nintendo DS Lite doesn't do WPA, and I'm reluctant to downgrade to WEP.

I do have an extra AP. Is there a practical (read non-troublesome) way to setup things so the second AP runs WEP while my current AP remains WPA.

BTW: Christmas seems to have wiped out the entire national supply of DS lite's.

This is probably the easy way but now what you are asking http://ds.ign.com/articles/665/665128p1.html

Yes, simply set up the second AP.

It was a common part of my testing at Microsoft to set up multiple access points on the same wired LAN.

The only thing you need to make sure of is:
- The two access points to not conflict in their wired addresses.
- The DHCP ranges doled out by the access points do not conflict. You might have to reduce the DHCP range of the WPA access point to leave room for DHCP addresses for the WEP access point.

If your cable modem already doles out all the addresses, it might be possible for the extra WEP access point to just get set to "Use existing DHCP server" in all cases and thus solve both of those two above problems automatically.


Oh, and:
- Remember to unplug the WEP access point when your niece leaves. The point of using WPA's additional security is completely lost when you've got that WEP access point plugged in.

Odd. I was certain that there was a firmware patch for WPA support on the DS but I can't find it now. Not really suitable for you however as I think it disabled WEP.

Alternatively, if the second AP is actually an AP/router, you could set it up so you had an external network (run by your existing AP and cable modem, and open or using WEP), and inside that the second AP/router running an internal network on a different IP range, using WPA and containing all the stuff you actually care about.

Peter

Yes - I ended up setting up 3 different wireless LANs at home, segregated by hardware firewalls just so I could have the kids and friends gaming on one WLAN, non business WLAN and a work WLAN.

Saves you from the wily ways of little kids...very damaging, they are

In my googling I ran across many posts expressing a desire for a firmware patch to enable WAP.

As the wireless settings cannot be accessed without a Wi-Fi enabled game inserted, I suspect the functionality/firmware is not based in the game console but in each game cartridge.

If that is true, and I were Nintendo, I'd be leery of creating a situation where there was a demand for replacements.

Interesting. Would something like this be similar.
Cable modem > WEP_ap > WAP_ap > private net

I worry something like that would get too weird, there being two levels of NAT in the chain.

Edit: or would this be a case were the WAP_AP would be in the DMZ of the WEP_AP.

Is more like:
cable modem - HW firewall --- WEP AP
\---------- HW Firewall - non business WPA AP
\--------- HW Firewall - business WPA AP


I also have separate DMZs for other stuff (external SSH connections etc)...I think 5 DMZs and 2 protected internal networks

the 2nd and 3rd firewalls come from the first one - blimming whitespace removal!

I would love to use such a patch, and have been searching for a while. No success, unfortunately. Currently, I just don't use my DS in my network at home. I was thinking to set up a second AP just for the WEP, too.

I had another dig around and from what I can tell, it was fake. The files the author put up were just garbage with a NDS header stuck on the top.