Does the Nintendo DSi support wpa2-psk encryption?

Answer 1

Yes and no.

When setting up the network connection in the DSi menu settings, you have to go into the advanced settings. Only in the advanced settings are you allowed to enter a network encrypted through WPA-PSK. Why it is this way is a complete mystery but only a minor annoyance.


The problem is that once you have gone through entering your network or SSID, and you go to enter your password, you discover quickly that the password must be only letters, numbers, and just a measly handful of symbols. So if you have a password with only letters and numbers, you are safe. If you have any given symbol in your network password, you're boned. Personally, I'm not comfortable only using letters and numbers in my encryption process; a mixture of symbols are a must for security purposes in WPA/WPA2 systems.


Finally, and perhaps most importantly, only new DSi games that have been created to work on the DSi are capable of using a WPA2 network connection! So all your old games? They won't work. And whether or not games released after the DSi WPA2 architecture was built is completely up to the game designer. In other words, games built after the DSi was released may or may not work with WPA2.


For the most part, you are stuck with a WEP network or no network play. There may be a few dozen games released in 2009 that support WPA2. The internet browser and the DSi store, however, both work perfectly fine on a WPA2-PSK protected network.