- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
and as i emphasized before...
the purpose of forwarding ports is to tell the router to route all traffic FROM THE INTERNET to that ip. it makes absolutely NO difference in lan. the reason you can only forward to one ip per port is because it cant send all data from one port to two computers...
my brother joins games on my computer all the time. and both of us use the default port settings of 2302 and 2303 udp. if you havent already, make sure that you have forwarded the ports in the router in UDP.
heres what i would do: kill your net connection (take the cable out of the wan port on the back of your router). you will have all functions of private lan without the dangers of the unfirewalled internet. now turn off all security software on all computers involved with halo. then try it. get it working without security software, and when you do, then try turning the security on. if it doesnt work then, check to make sure halo.exe has access to private lan and internet. if it does, then make sure the firewall does not think that the network connection is a internet connection. make it think it is a private network connection. this may seem risky seeing as the connection really is internet, but if your router has a firewall (most do) then you should be ok. if it works now, then good for us. if not, then check ports. the dedicated server can be whatever you feel like. heck make it port 1337 and 1338 for all i care. 2302 and 2303 are the simplest choices though. make sure that if you join from a client on the same computer as the server, you change the ports in-game to something else. try joining from another computer, and make sure all the aforementioned firewall settings are the same on both computers. if it still doesnt work... damn. next, find out how to open the ports the ds uses in your firewall. try using a method that doesnt apply only to halo.exe, but to all programs. i found in zonealarm if i open ports for halo.exe only it doesnt work. this is where norton sucks. eventually, after 20 mins of searching, i found this setting buried in something that didnt even make sense as context for this setting, and even then it didnt work. if you use norton and wish to host a server, i strongly suggest you get zonealarm pro instead. this only really needs to be done server-side.
if none of the above mentioned processes work, then you will need someone who can look at your network setup in person, because this is just about everything anyone here can say without specific information and observation of your network setup.
P.S.: once you either decide it works or doesnt, you can go ahead and plug the cable back into the wan port ;) internet always is a nice thing (ok not always...lol)
[Edited on 1/26/2006]