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A housemate and I have each bought Call of Duty 4 for the PC and wish to play online, perhaps even in the same game. I've just installed mine tonight, and we both upgraded to 1.4; we cannot both play behind the router (DSL service)

Our first attempt: housemate logs in, gets big list of servers. I log in, get about 5 servers with outrageously high ping for each.

Second attempt: housemate was playing different game (WoW), so I try again, get big list of servers, start playing. Housemate logs in, my game locks up, I exit in disgust and find this site.

We each have our own copies (so we each have our own keys), we each have game disc in drive, we can each play multiplayer if the other person isn't, we've played other games multiplayer no problem (Battlefield series, 3 guys playing WoW, etc).

I'm not hosting the game, just trying to join. Any ideas on this one, or does one person have to cart their PC to a buddy's house nearby?

I'm pretty sure you need to forward some ports to your router, then forward them from there.

I had done the port forwarding as described on the support page at Activision; didn't work at all. That is, either of us could play as long as the other person stayed off of CoD4 multiplayer...

However, when I got rid of the 1.4 update (uninstall but keep the save games and profiles, then reinstall), everything works peachy with no modifying the router. So I figure Activision broke something in between 1.0 and 1.4...

You may need to get a punkbuster update for things to work correctly; this can be done outside the game quite easily (go to the punkbuster site, follow along to CoD 4, get the punkbuster updater, etc)