The symptoms, there really was only one, when going to connect to the router, my Nintendo DS would show my wireless network with a gray lock. No lock is an unsecured network, a red lock is a secured network, and a gray lock is also a secured network, but one that has settings that the DS does not support.

Today I found the solution to my problem, the gray lock, through lots of searching and two very useful posts.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Edco/airport-extreme-and-nintendo-ds-wifi-78447.phtml

and

http://forums.mactalk.com.au/33/41958-connecting-ds-airport-extreme-802-11n-solution.html

Both posts basically say the same thing. Just in case these links don’t work at a future date I will sum up what they say. Your Nintendo DS only supports certain encryption settings (WEP). Wireless (N) which is what the new airport extreme’s use does not support the type of (WEP) that is needed. When you open up the Airport Utility found in the Applications/Utilities folder you will click on the manual setup. The Airport icon should be selected by default and you will need to select the Wireless tab.

Radio Mode while holding the option key

In the drop down labeled “Radio Mode” by default there are no non-N network settings…. but they are their… sort of. When you click to select the Radio Mode, hold down the option key and like magic you will see several options that were not available before. From this list you can choose 802.11b/g compatible for your Radio Mode. Now you can select for the drop down labeled “Wireless Security” Web 128 bit. This is assuming you want wireless security on your router. With that selected you will need to create a thirteen character passcode that you will use to connect all wireless devices. Once done, click on update and try your connection again.

One side note about security that was brought up in the reply posts of the second link was that WEP security is not very strong. This is true and it is something to take into consideration if changing your settings to WEP from a more secure method (WPA). Because I do not use my DS online very often, and since I now can easily set it up, I keep my network at WPA2 security and only change it to WEP when playing the DS online. Although its not the best solution, it works for now.

While in the parking lot heading home I realized I had a close to full strength signal on my iPod from my base station which was a couple hundred feet away, five stories up, and in the corner of an old brick building.