Connecting the Wii to an OpenWRT router
I still use the Wii in my room regularly. Despite its age, it is still a fun console to use, and there is a dedicated community that focuses on Wii modding and maintaining their own versions of features such as the News Channel. If you have a Wii that has been collecting dust, it is worth modding it. It is easy to do so these days, and the chance of bricking a Wii is extremely low unless you deliberately ignore warnings. There is a modding guide online that I will link to at the end of this post.
Unfortunately, the Wii has a problem with its network adapter that may not be obvious. While the Wii supports 802.11g, the router needs to announce that 802.11b is available. Many routers today disable 802.11b because a device using 802.11b causes the rest of the network to slow down, but under those circumstances, the Wii cannot connect.
My router uses OpenWRT, and I updated it from 23.05.5 to 24.10.1 yesterday. Due to a change in how the router's configuration is stored, which OpenWRT users will know as the swconfig to DSA migration, I had to upgrade without carrying over my previous configuration. Thus, I had to reconfigure my router after the upgrade, and I forgot that the Wii is a special case that needed 802.11b support to be enabled.
The relevant option is located in LuCI at: Network -> Wireless -> Edit the 802.11b/g/n access point -> Allow legacy 802.11b rates
Hopefully this helps someone figure out why their Wii is not connecting to their router. Maybe it will help me in the future if I had to reconfigure my router again.