Hello.

Since I am generally new in this forum, here is a small introduction about me, to avoid questions about my credibility or in general, useless questions which can be ignored: I am a simple person who has been the owner of Mario Kart DS Network (at the moment, only a Discord server with good networking with all the main sites and resources of the game, such as the Players' Page, the Modding scene of the game, the Japanese community, Speedrun.com and so on) for the past 2 years. I've been centralizing the Mario Kart DS Community into the Network through partnerships with other communities and the most important players or figures that the MKDS scene has to offer with, to say the least, a great success. We have organized a good couple of events, not only online via Wiimmfi but also offline, some of those received the attention of very important people such as TWD98 or Mankalor, which was pretty nice.

But in any case, I'm not here to talk about me, I'm here to talk about the problems the community encountered in the past 2 years.
They aren't many problems, as far as we know, but there have been many cases of players experiencing these issues.
But before starting I completely understand Wiimmfi is a free service, by the DS and Wii communities for the DS and Wii communities: the purpose of this thread is to report and notify about the trouble many players of the Mario Kart DS went through for, to their opinion, unfair or unjustified reasons, hoping that most of these can be solved and/or fixed.

While I have reports of the "pre-MKDS Network-history", dated between 2015 and 2018, I will mainly focus on the years where I have been able to verify by myself all of these problems, those being 2019-2021, but most importantly between the second half of 2020 and 2021, since this is the time when I received most reports, probably due to the rising activity caused by the so-called "Renaissance of MKDS".

I will mainly talk for the community, not for me. I as well have been experiencing issues, some of these are also reported here, but most of my words come from the actual players of the community who reported to me these issues. If I use "we" as subject, you can know who is talking is a group of players, not only me or just not me.

This section is made to report general issues encountered while searching opponents. These happen to the majority of the players, I could round to around 75-65%% of them.
In general, at certain quite frequent times which don't seem to follow a particular order, it will be very hard to find opponents, due to random disconnections from the server (errors 85020 and 61070).
While this could depend by the player's Network, it doesn't look like it (standing to said players' reports):
At some times, the service will just make disconnect players from the research mode. And this is constant and keeps happening for even more than a hour. It is quite annoying, and it seems there is no cause coming from the player because:
- Some players experience this problem it at times, but when they don't, the connection between them and their opponents is perfectly stable, with no disconnection, slowdown or lag.
- Some players have a Wii and Mario Kart Wii, tried to connect to Wiimmfi and play some races, and it worked with no issue.
- Some players experience this problem with melonDS and Ethernet connection.
- Most players are very close to their access point.
- Most players don't experience any network problem with other devices or other sites/services.
- Most players (not every player, however) experience this issue at the same time.
- All players who experienced these problems never found any instability with the official 3DS servers.

We noticed this doesn't happen at all with most games,
This might be a problem of the DS firmware, if it isn't coming from Wiimmfi. It would be nice if it can be confirmed Wiimmfi isn't part of this.

This is by far the most known error.
I remember reporting this already to Leseratte a year ago, but we haven't seen any progress about this at all, and if there was any, it must be recent. If that's the case, you can ignore this part.
The error in question is a ban, of course, and why is it unjustified? Because majority (of course, I can't say all as this is the "Ban" error, so actual cheaters ARE included for obvious reasons) of the players who got this error didn't actually cheat?
Why? Well, I've talked already with Leseratte about this, and (standing to my memory at least, sadly I couldn't find the actual discussion which took place on Discord DMs) the problem comes from melonDS which has a "default" IP or another kind of identifier. This identifier, being the same for every melonDS user, is the cause of each ban, which is automatic because the system thinks it's a problem of alting.
Quite curious, since in the "About banning" thread, there is written "The server system will not have an automatic ban system. And it can't have one, because the servers don't watch the game. However, my server system will support banning in 2 levels, maybe with timeouts.".
I suppose this is an exception to the "only-manual" bans, since it's quite easy to implement.
I've been told that this unic melonDS identifier will be whitelisted, but it seems it didn't happen yet.
Sooo... Any news about this?

This is another ban-related error apparently. While what the RiiConnect24 Bot says doesn't specify an actual ban, it seems that this might be the temp-ban error, from what some players experienced.
I will use the "Scyhigh case", which is the most detailed form of this error we currently have.
Scyhigh is a Mario Kart DS community member who often played with his friends some MKDS ROM Hacks. Wiimm's Cheating / Bans """policy""" states "I don't like cheating if not all users have agreed cheating. Normal users will play under regular conditions. And if a cheater enters the race, he destroys the game play. That's not nice nor funny, its simple trolling. If people playing in a private room and knows about cheats and accept them, then it is ok. For example my tester team use cheats if testing new tracks.". While we only have word-proof only of Scyhigh playing with people he knew or contacted beforehand, I don't really see why he should report to me this incident: if he actually cheated, he could just reset his WFC data and circumvent the ban. So I believe he is saying the truth. Proof apart, he said:
"All I did was playing a ROM Hack with my friend: this Hack had modifications to the stats of the karts only. This friend of mine obviously knew of the modification. No other player was involved."
However, the description of his ban said:
"Various cheats. Most peculiar codes. What a strange game this is."
Apart from the fact I find this description quite unprofessional, it doesn't match with what actually happened. It isn't even near to it.
No AR Code was involved and no peculiar modification was involved either. And, standing to the cheating policy, Scyhigh shouldn't have been banned in first place.
I've received other reports of connection to Wiimmfi being denied after having races with AR Codes or ROM Hacks involved, but I have no evidence of an "actual ban" (the description for error 23917 only says the connection is denied, after all) for those, so I will only state this probably isn't the first or only case.
But in general, shouldn't the ban system work only on other players' reports, accompanied by evidence?
Please clarify this, because there have been a lot of cases of players getting banned for no reason or, at least apparent, report, and even if said players actually got reported, where could they get the evidence if they didn't cheat in first place?

This is the latest and less known error someone ever reported to me.
This error is what the player Utterrandomness, quite famous not only for his long-lasting presence in the community since 2006, but also for his World Records and Former Best Player titles.
The solution for this error states "Try again if not a ban.".
Well, he didn't cheat and he doesn't have any reason to be banned. So, it can't be a ban, right? Yet, even if he tried connecting with different consoles and cartridges, this error prevented him to find opponents.
The error only appears when he is connected to the servers, not when he tries to. Could this too be cleared out? We didn't find anything in the bans list about this.
It can't be a normal ban, it doesn't seem to be a firewall problem since he checked everything and there was nothing wrong in any settings, and he also could connect successfully as the problem only comes when he is actually searching for opponents. So, what's happening?

The list doesn't finish here: there are other errors which were very uncommon or that we only saw only once. I am excluding these errors not only because we can't find enough evidence, details and information about them but also because they are too rare to be actually documented.
However I can say for sure there have been other cases and errors. I can't really say they are a ban or anything caused by Wiimmfi instead of a problem coming from the player's network

This... Well, this is more of a request, rather than an actual report.
We, as the MKDS community, find the current process of reporting cheaters quite... Inconvenient, to sum it up.
First of all, the reason most cheaters don't get reported is because most of the times, the players themselves don't know of the presence of a "reports system", they barely know you can get banned. This comes from the quite absent support for DS games in the Bans List and from the over-popularity of MKW in said list (which obviously, can't be fixed). And in general, it isn't even mentioned bans in DS games are possible.
Second of all, to report cheaters you need to go here, make an account and post about it by providing evidence and identifiers. Most people won't use this forum for anything else, because all they care about is a better future matchmaking, so the need to make an account only to forget about the site itself is quite inconvenient and, for most players, just a waste of time. Most bans are actually reported in Mario Kart DS Network, with the usage of our bot which provides the Friend Codes for the players who are currently in a match, and their username. But of course, nothing happens to them, they are just "known" and people can recognize them quite easily.
Third and last of all, the actual "Ban Team" doesn't have any connection with our community and perhaps the closest user is MrBean, and his position on being someone who can ban people is unknown to us. This is quite inconvenient as well: if there is someone who is active between us, cares about the game and can quickly ask questions and evidence about every report with a couple of messages and immediately proceed with a ban if it is necessary, then the things would actually be very cool and the cheating problem could be very easily cleared and fixed. And that can also benefit to prevent it: if you cheat and get immediately banned for 7 times or more, you just stop trying don't you?
Since things are like this and even if I perfectly know "entries for the ban team will be ignored", I still want to point out that a better system or the addition of a trusted member from our community would benefit a lot, and it also would prevent unfair or unjustified bans, as the MKDS community now is used to ask if there are people available to play in our Discord server BEFORE actually searching, so we can easily know if the players accepted to use hacks. Not asking for this to actually happen, however an upgrade to the current report system would be much, MUCH appreciated.

This is quite a long thread indeed, but many people from the community are tired to see random bans or unclear issues so it became a must now.
I will say it again, the purpose of this is to notify about the current problems we, as community, have been experiencing lately or during the past years. We completely understand Wiimmfi is a free-service and no one is getting paid for it, but a better service is always nice, and even if the changes, fixes and edits are done slowly BUT still done, we will be very happy about it.
I think many of these problems aren't even known, so I feel like this report will have a positive outcome because at least people will be notified about it and people CAN know about the presence of these issues.
I would have preferred to take this in the private messages with a Wiimmfi developer in some kind of messaging app like Discord, instead of a thread in the forum, because a direct confrontation is always better for these things, but even a thread will be fine. As long as we, the community, can make a report of all the problems, so we can help and provide helpful information in general for a "better future", it will be fine.

I will leave my Discord tag here, in case clarifications are requested: Pikalex04#8877.
I excuse myself in advance for typos or weird wording. I'm not a native speaker. I hope this will still be enough clear to the average reader.

Thanks for reading.

Alright, thanks for the quick answer.
We still have some questions, or better, we'd like a more in-depth response in some points, because it kind of feels a bit weird that the cause of some error is just a "shitty connection".

- General Connection Problems: if that's so, why does it happen to many players at the same time? And also, why does it happen only once in a while and not every time? But most importantly, why does pretty much everyone experience it? As I previously said, when it happens, it's pretty much impossible to connect, but when it doesn't happen, the connection is even more than stable. And they are like a hit or miss, sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, there isn't a case being more likely to happen than the other. And if it actually is a problem coming from the user's, why does that happen only with Wiimmfi? As I stated, most people can even stream at full speed their New 3DS screen with no slowdown at all and surely no actual cut. Most can use 3DS official servers, and most have a very fast connection. Can we know a more specific reason for this?
I also forgot to mention that very often people get disconnections during races, but they weren't lagging or having any kind of problem. Other times, it happens that while more people are searching, lobbies of 4 players are never made, but only lobbies of 2 players (and sometimes 3, but it's rare). This also happens quite often. About this last problem, is it caused by Wiimmfi or is it due to how MKDS works?

- About bans with melonDS, thanks for clearing everything up. This time it's very clear and understandable. However, it's also true that to fix the ban, you can simply select the option to reset your WFC Data in the WFC Configuration Panel. That's very, very easy to do, and if someone asks support to us about these bans, we will always say to do this. It also is written in our guide on how to connect, which is the most extensive one so far. Our stance as community is that circumventing bans on emulator is already very easy and as now they are just a nuisance, since you need to ask "what happened and why", then reset the data, and play (or even cheat) like nothing happened. Resetting your WFC data doesn't even clear the the save file or any progress, so there is no loss on doing it. We don't think it can be easier than that already.

- 23917: I haven't found any post in the thread about this (but it might be my bad or a problem of the search function). The Friend Code is 2454-1427-8753. I suppose that maybe a typo happened?

- Error 91010: so, it randomly stops for no reason? How is that possible? The player in question didn't receive any connection cut with any other device while he was trying. And plus, more than a single console and a single cartridge have been used. Sure there is no other possible reason?

- Other errors - "just have a shitty connection", well that would be quite hilarious if they can stream at the same time, play a lot more extensive games online, or in general have a very high ping, download and upload speed, no? Plus, how would everyone who plays MKDS have a shitty connection? I'm not saying that's impossible, but given the fact many can stream too with no problem, I find it unlikely that the connection is just shitty, and not to mention the other factors I explained in "General Connection Problems". Again, are we sure there can't be any other possible causes?

- Reporting cheaters: that would be very appreciated, yeah. Thank you a lot.

In any case, sorry if we want more accurate answers. It just feels weird, given the many other factors. Thanks a lot for your time, we appreciate it.

Quite interesting, so it's mainly the firmware or in any case how the DS works, as I thought. Thank you for this information, quite confirms what I thought.

It seems it doesn't matter at all: many use routers and many use mobile hotspots.
Sometimes, it also happens with melonDS and Ethernet, apparently.

I don't really know about the WFC USB Connector because not many people in our community use it.