Slashdot Mirror
Nintendo & McDonalds Providing WiFi
redemtionboy writes "According to IGN, "Nintendo of America on Tuesday will announce a groundbreaking partnership with Wi-Fi provider Wayport to make available free Internet access to DS owners at McDonald's restaurants across the nation." " There are so many potential jokes here that I'm gonna just leave it to you guys to make your own.
I thought this was mentioned on /. before, but McDonald's offers free Wifi for laptop users anyway. I don't know how widespread this is, but it's already offered in my small town.
The funny thing is that they are supposed to give you a 30min user/pass for while you eat, but somebody screwed it up here. Right now they are giving out a single permanent user/pass combinations instead of temp ones... McDonald's, while out of my way a bit, is still a pretty convenient hotspot for me.
I just pooped your party.
From TFA:
... to play online games with or against each other."
"Nintendo and Wayport will offer complimentary Wi-Fi hotspots... enabling DS owners
The DS does not have a TCP stack and has no native support for IPv4 or IPv6 (from http://www.darkain.com/nintendo_ds/nifi.php):
"The DS does not internally support a TCP stack or any IPv4/IPv6 communications at all. This is why the DS cannot be played online without the use of tunneling... Ni-Fi is a layer 3 protocol on top of 802.11."
802.11x is a network layer, not a magical gateway to "Teh internets"
So it goes to reason that the McDonalds hotspot for the DS won't support regular tcp/ip, as its a hotspot for DS users to play with each other. You probably won't be able to connect your laptop to it.
You wouldn't even need a list. Just filter by the first three bytes (manufacturer).
-mkb