the part of Nintendo, as it prevents outside parties from connecting to the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector with their computers and accessing the user's Internet connection or computer. While the Wi-Fi USB Connector can be modified to bypass this, it is unsupported by Nintendo. Operating system support Initially, the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector only supported Microsoft Windows XP. A main concern at that time was the lack of support for older versions of Windows, principally Windows 2000. After the introduction of the Windows Vista operating system, however, criticism shifted to a lack of support for the new platform. Though Vista drivers were eventually released by Nintendo of Europe and Nintendo of America, it was two years after the first Windows XP drivers were available and several months after Vista's launch. There is no official support for Windows 7/8/10 (although it is possible to install working drivers when under compatibility mode). It is possible to use the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector as a USB Wi-Fi NIC to connect to other access points under Linux and BSD when using the appropriate drivers. Notably, Debian and Debian-based systems such as Ubuntu have out of the box support for the chipset in the device. Additionally, there is currently no official support for Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, or driver for the 64-bit versions of Windows XP or Windows Vista; there are only drivers for 32-bit versions of these operating systems. Internet connection sharing The core functionality of the Nintendo Wi-Fi USB Connector is provided by Windows' Internet Connection Sharing (ICS) feature, which allows a Windows computer to act as a router and automatically configure client devices for Internet access. Due to limitations in ICS, there are a number of caveats with this method. Like the Wi-Fi USB Connector software itself, ICS offers the user no configurable options. This means that ICS may not function as expected, or at all, in complex network environments. In addition, Windows cannot handle multiple ICS configurations simultaneously, or in other words, only a single application or network device can use and configure ICS at one time. This means that if your network is currently relying on ICS or you use software that utilizes it (such as Windows Media Center Extender for the Xbox 360), you may not be able to use the Wi-Fi USB Connector at all. Software firewall compatibility Though not an innate fault with the Wi-Fi USB