Online requirements on Sony and Nintendo consoles

When Xbox One was announced back in the days, people were absolutely furious about the “always online” propositions that were done at its announcement. I can largely see two reasons why people were furious.

1. “What about when the sewer construction in my neighbourhood cuts the Internet for an hour?”
2. “What about when I’m at the mountain cottage, which I paid far too much money for in the first place?”

A large number of people were thankful when Microsoft retracted these some weeks later. But that’s not to say that any gaming consoles these days can be permanently placed at a remote cottage with no internet. Since I have or had owned a large number of Nintendo and Sony consoles over the years, it’s time to summarise what I know about the internet demands of those consoles, for your benefits and decisions!

Nintendo 3DS: One way to solve error 003-2001 and 003-2101

Difficulty level: Medium-Low. — Dialogue level: Medium-High. Last edited substantially on the 25th of January 2016.

The tales of the internet are full of stories about Nintendo 3DS users who simply cannot connect to the internet with any regularity, getting the errors 003-2001 and 003-2101 on almost every attempt. These errors attempt to tell you that it could be a signal environment interference or a DNS problem. I do not claim to have the one and only ultimate solution, but it helped me, so surely this would have to help someone else out there who have the same problem.

In my case, it was the former, but not in a way that I expected it to be. It turned out that my router and my range extender were in a serious clinch with each other, preventing both of them from getting a consistent online access. And for me, it was as easy as just pulling the electricity plug out of the range extender, but for an only slightly more detailed list of things to do, read on further, after this break!

Windows Phone and router viruses: A rarely told story

Difficulty level: Medium-High (Problem distancing), Very High (Full fix). — Dialogue level: Medium, many terms are explained.

So you’re browsing on your phone one day, and suddenly you see your Internet Explorer / Edge / Opera / UCBrowser constantly redirect to a bunch of hookus virus-filled ads? And then you look up “windows phone virus” on Google only to see the Windows Phone technicians high up on their horses, stating that viruses on the phone is impossible? Well, they’re technically right, but you still got yourself a pretty nasty virus even then.

Because, you see, that means the by far most likely scenario, is that you’ve got a virus on the router itself. If that happens, you’re in some deep trouble, but I’ll guide you through my own experience of what has been treated as a hush-hush topic by Windows Phone fans and slightly-out-of-date router experts.