My friends and I have Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War and want to play it very badly. The problem is I am on a University network and my friend is at home. The network here doesn't support gaming very well and so we can't play on the GameSpy server. One of the options in multi-player play is directhost and direct join and we try to do that (by giving each other our IP's and one of us being the host), but it doesn't work.
My friend says it has something to do with our firewalls and ports. I understand firewalls, but I've always been a little fuzzy with ports.
I am connected straight into the wall, but my friend has a router.
Can someone help? [feel free to ask for more info]

ok So ive been researching ports, and it sounds like I need to find an open UDP port and attach the IP address of the host to it. Does that sound right, and is so how do I find an open port/how to I configure a game to go through a different port?

Woah yes all i need now is to find an open port! or figure out how to open a closed one!
I did this by downloading a program call SocksCap V2

Nevermind the port crap, it's too much effort and risk, I think all my friend needs to figure out is how to configure his router with port forwarding. Can someone point us in the right direction?
p.s. I don't know how to delete this thread or edit so I have to keep replying to it.