Firewall in XP

Ok... I used to be able to play games online before I started using the winXp ugrade. Now I'm up to date but have to turn my firewall off to link up to an internet game such as one hosted on my brothers machine. Typically I type in his Ip address and we connect up but now it wont do it unless the firewall is down. Is there some setting I can set to keep the firewall up and still connect to his computer(for games)????

Thanks

 

Re Firewall

The XP firewall is a sort of All-Or-Nothing affair.
Your best bet is to disable it for good via your network dial-up / DSL account, and use ZoneAlarm or some other 3rd party firewall software that wasn't dream't up after particularly long lunch at Redmond.
If you're really in love with the XP firewall, you could add a service definition to it:
Open Network Connections.
Click the shared connection or the Internet connection that is protected by Internet Connection Firewall, and then, under Tasks, click Change settings of this connection.
On the Advanced tab, click Settings.
On the Services tab, click Add and enter all of the following information:
In Description of service, type an easily recognized name for the service.
In Name or IP address of the computer hosting this service on your network, type the name or IP address of the computer that runs the service.
In External port number for this service, type the port number that external computers will use to contact this service.
In Internal Port number for this service, type the port number that the service on your network is using.
Click either TCP or UDP.
(The last bit is Microsoftspeak: I copied it from the Network Help file)
It's really a lot of work, when ZA, etc, can do the same with a checkbox tick.