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Hopefully everything has gone well for you, but if not, here are some things to try.

• When you're trying to change the port on one of your games, leave another computer using the default port of 6112 connected to Battle.net. Create a private game with a password on the computer using the default port. Since the default port will be in use by the other machine, you will know immediately when you succeed in changing the default port of that computer. Once you can join the game being hosted on the other computer, then you will know that you've accomplished your goal of configuring your computer.
  
  
• Since you will probably only be playing one Battle.net game at a time, use the same port number for every Blizzard game on your computer. If you configured StarCraft to use port 6115, then you should also configure WarCraft III to use port 6115.
  
  
• If you have a firewall, turn it off initially. If things work correctly with the firewall off, then you know the source of your problems. I can say from experience, if you have Norton's Internet Security on a Windows machine, then you may have some extra challenges. Even when Norton's claims to be disabled, there are still some parts of the program that seem to run in the background. At the same time, if you're running Windows, then there must be that small part of you that likes the abuse. Enjoy.
  
  
• Make sure that you are using the latest version of the game. The easiest way is to connect to Battle.net. If there is an update, you will know immediately. Your other option is to download the updater from Blizzard's website. If you have trouble with the updater that you downloaded, try moving it into the actual game folder and then launch the updater. This seems to solve the error message of game not found.
  
  
• Make sure that your internet router is not connecting to the internet using an IP address that begins with 192.168.xxx.xxx. If so, your ISP has issued you a private IP. End result, you're connected to their NAT router, and you have no control over how they configure their NAT router. No game hosting, no BitTorrent, etc. Your best option is to find another ISP.
  

• If you receive latency errors when trying to host a game, you may want to explore your Cable/DSL modem options. I've recently become aware that my Verizon DSL modem blocks inbound traffic, and it requires ports to be opened for hosting Blizzard games. I've only just started to research this one, so I don't have any definitive answers about my modem configuration as of yet. The cable modem at my other residence is much more basic, which I appreciate. I'm not sure how common it is for broadband companies to use modems that require manually opening ports, but this is something you should be aware of.

IPX on a LAN

If you are using IPX to play on your network, make sure that all the computers on your LAN have IPX configured with the following settings.

• Frame Type: 802.3
• Max Connections : 16
• Max Sockets: 32

More help can be found at http://www.blizzard.com/support/?id=awt090p

IPX on Mac OS X

I've had minor success in getting IPX to work under Mac OS X. Since Mac OS X doesn't offer the IPX protocol, a third party solution is needed. Since the solution costs much more than the game, I've decided that this was not a viable solution. If anybody knows a free solution to add IPX to Mac OS X, let me know.

contact: battlelan@junkboxoftech.com