Ok I have 2 comps one 98, one xp. on a linksys router, wireless. (not wireless comps yet though). and a DSL modem.

It's all hooked up correctly and working GREAT MUCH better than using a crossover cable.

But I'm unsure how to enabel BOTH comps to be able to use services such as Yahoo webcam. I need to open port 5001 for both comps to be able to use it. (along with a bunch of others that i havn't tried to track down yet)

Port forwarding doesn't seem to be the way to go because then i would need to set which comp it would go to. And i want either to be able to use everything. (me and the g/f share them and frequently I use both so use YIM, AIM, ect on both)

I tried setting the port triggering to alow port 5001 - 5001 as the triggered range and 5001-5001 as the forwarded range. This had no effect on being able to recieve a webcam connection.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

AFAIK the Yahoo Webcam port is 5100.. You have to set the trigger ports to somethining that are actually used between you and the other side. You might as well set it to 1-65535 to be sure.

Well wouldn't opening THAT many ports leave me rather vulnerable? Or will the firewall still keep things that are not suppose to be in, out of my network?

Trigger ports don't open anything.

A trigger port means that the forwarding rule is activated only when you have connected the other side through one of the trigger ports. So a trigger range 1-65535 means that the 5100 port will be forwarded only when you have made any connection to the other side previously. This way you can activate the cam forwarding by doing a file transfer first for example.

So that doesn't really sound like the software would operate normally... any ways to safly open the required ports without opening myself to much, that wouldn't require anything different when using the software? so it would still work like i was just on dial up?

Trigger ports are the only way you can use if you want to watch webcams on both computers and use that router of yours. BTW you still won't be able to watch webcams simultaneously on both machines. Blame Yahoo for making bad software.

still doesn't seem to work.

I'm tring to recieve a webcam invite or whatever.

Only thing i can think of is that both comps need static ips on the LAN.

Any thoughts?

Both computers absolutely need static IPs if you are using port forwarding.

Another solution would be to get a uPnP supporting router. I don't know whether Yahoo could take advantage of it though.

my linksys router can use uPnP. maybe the_eldests linksys router has uPnp as well.

I think it does... How would i set that up?

Make sure you have uPnP service running and there should be setting somewhee in the router config also to enable it. And then you have to pray that Yahoo Messenger atually knows anything about upnp.