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I’ve been spending some time on my favorite Wii forums recently, and I’ve seen several people who are having trouble getting their Wii to connect to the Internet. If you’re not a computer geek (and I mean that in the most complimentary sense of the word – I’m a geek and proud of it!), making your Wii communicate with the outside world can be a bit tricky. So, I’d like to offer a few tips to get you all going on this. After all, playing your favorite Wii games against your online friends is one of the things that makes the Wii such fun!

So, in order to connect your Wii to the Internet, the first thing you need is a high-speed connection. Cable, DSL, satellite… any type of broadband will do. If you only have dial-up at your house, I’m afraid you are out of luck on this one (unless one of your neighbors is willing to share his connection with you – MAKE SURE you get permission first!).

Once you know that your house has a high-speed internet connection, the next thing you need is a wireless router. This is a piece of equipment that basically sits between your high-speed connection and any devices (PCs, Macs, laptops, iPods, Wiis, etc.) that can communicate with the Internet. Your high-speed connection sends the signal to the router, then the router transmits it around to any devices within range.

(This is probably also a good place to put in a plug for enabling encryption on your router when you set it up. If you don’t, any of your friends, neighbors, passers-by – anyone within range — will be able to use your Internet service. Theoretically, that’s OK, but if someone commits some sort of online crime or fraud on your IP address, the cyber-crime division is gonna be knocking on your door.)

OK, onward! If you have a high-speed Internet connection, but don’t yet have a wireless router, they are relatively inexpensive. Check out Amazon.com and you will be able to get some pretty good deals. I’ve listed a few below to give you some ideas on what you are looking for.

Now that you have a high-speed Internet connection, and your wireless router is connected and transmitting a signal, you are ready to perform the setup on your Wii. I’ve included some step-by-step instructions for this below:

1. On the Wii console’s main menu, click on the “Wii” button in the lower left corner. This will take you to the Settings screen. Choose “Wii Settings.”
2. Under “Wii System Settings” click on the blue right-arrow to scroll to the second screen of options. On this screen, choose the “Internet” button.
3. On the “Internet” screen, click the button for “Connection Settings.” On the next screen, choose an open connection (open connections will say “None” on the right-hand side of the button).
4. On the next screen, choose “Wireless Connection,” then click the button that says “Search for an Access Point.” This will tell your Wii to find any WiFi (wireless) connections that are within range. When it has found them, it will display the message “Choose the Access Point you wish to connect to…” Click the “OK” button to proceed to the next screen.
5. Here you will see a list of all the WiFi connections that are within range of your Wii. If you’ve followed my previous recommendations, your connection will be encrypted, as designated by a closed padlock symbol. If you haven’t encrypted your router, your padlock will be open. If this is the case, all you need to do is choose your connection by clicking on it, and continue to click the “OK” button until the Wii has performed its automatic connection test.
6. If you have followed my recommendations on encryption, you have an extra step or two at this point. Once you choose your wireless connection, the Wii will ask you what type of security your router uses. You should be able to find this information either in your router’s documentation, or in the utility you used when you connected and set up your router. After you choose the appropriate type of security, you will be asked to input the password or key. Here is where it seems like people have been having trouble. In order to make this work correctly, I had to enter my encryption key in ALL UPPERCASE. This is different from how it worked for my computer, where it didn’t seem to matter whether I used upper or lower case letters. If you have any trouble making this work, I suggest you give this a try.

I hope you found this information helpful!

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