I just got a brand new PS3 (slim) last night! Needless to say I was excited and eager to get it setup and online. The actual setup was a breeze, thanks to HDMI cables and the quick and easy interface of the actual PS3. However, once I got to the network configuration part – what should have seemingly been a trivial experience quickly became an exercise in frustration!
Essentially what kept happening was that I would scan for wireless networks, find my network, select it, enter a WEP key and then it would hang for about 3 minutes trying to obtain an IP address, but ultimately fail. I tried a number of different things, including removing wireless security altogether (very un-recommended!) just to see if it would work. Alas I had no luck. Searching the internet resulted in forum thread after forum thread of people experiencing the same problem. (Meanwhile I was searching the internet via my laptop sitting next to my PS3, which was online via the wireless network no problem!) On top of that my Xbox 360 in the other room connected to my wireless network without a single hiccup!?
I did get it to work, finally, after about 45 minutes. The resulting fix still makes no sense, but I’m no network genius. Basically what I did was leave my wireless security settings alone and as they were originally, but in another area of my wireless router configuration interface (when you open a browser and enter http://192.168.1.1), I found an odd setting that I just played around with, for no other reason than I was frustrated and simply out of options at that point. The setting was for the broadcast range or something along those lines, where it was set to 2.675ghz (or whatever the specific number, wasn’t changeable) however there were 11 channels listed in a dropdown. Mine was currently set to 6 so I just changed it to 1. That resulted in my signal strength dropping almost 50% down to 25% (which wasn’t acceptable). So then I changed it to 11 (again, purely random and at this point no rhyme or reason to what I’m doing) – and that worked!!
So, long story short, all I did to get my PS3 working with my wireless router was change the broadcast channel of the actual wireless signal. I suspect they provide this channel option to help with people that have issues with an existing wireless device like a cordless phone or something similar interfering. I guess the PS3 only likes certain channels or spectrums or something when it comes to connecting wirelessly.