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Playing games locally across your AirPort network, as opposed to playing games over the Internet, ranks among the easier things to do with your network, and that's as it should be: After all, you shouldn't have to work too hard in order to play. For the most part, you simply need to make sure that your Mac and the computers used by other players can communicate with each other according to the game's needs, and that usually means configuring each machine's firewall settings properly.
Network games send information to each player's computer across the network, and tags that information with specific port numbers, so the game software on each computer can obtain just the game information and ignore the other information packets traveling across the network.
Different games tend to use different port numbers than the port numbers commonly used for things like mail, Web browsing, and file sharing. If you have your Mac's Firewall enabled, chances are good that the Firewall blocks those port numbers, Generally, your Firewall blocks all port numbers except those you have specifically approved. You have two choices:
 | - Turn off your Firewall: This approach makes all of the tens of thousands of port numbers on your Mac open to anyone on your network. On a normal AirPort network, where the base station provides the Internet connection, this does not present as great a risk as it otherwise might: The AirPort Base Station itself acts as a firewall, protecting your Mac from most unsolicited access attempts from the Internet. Nonetheless, turning off your Firewall does make you more vulnerable to unwelcome intrusions than you otherwise might be. It's like leaving the front door to your home unlocked: you never know who might come in and what they might do.
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- Approve the port numbers that the game requires: This method requires a trip to your Firewall settings in System Preferences, and creating an entry for each port your game software needs to use. Though somewhat more time-consuming to set up than simply turning off the Firewall, it doesn't take much more time and leaves your Mac better protected.
To set up your Mac's Firewall for local network gaming, do the following:
1. Open System Preferences.
2. Click Sharing.
The Sharing preferences appear.
3. Click the Firewall tab.
4. Do one of the following steps:
• Click Stop to turn off the Firewall, and close the Sharing window.
• If you see a Start button instead of a Stop button, it means that the Firewall is already off. In either case, you can skip the rest of these steps. All of your Mac's network ports are available.
• Click New, and continue to the next step.
• A sheet appears with controls you can use to specify network ports you want to make available.
5. In the sheet, click Other in the Port Name pop-up menu.
6. In the Description field, enter the name of the game.
Actually, you can enter anything you like, but specifying the game's name makes it easier for you to find this Firewall entry in the Firewall settings' Allow list the next time you want to play the game.
7. Enter the TCP and UDP port numbers you want to make available in the TCP Port Number(s) and the UDP Port Number(s) fields.
Your game's documentation can tell you what numbers to enter. Some games use TCP port numbers, some use UDP port numbers, some use both. You can enter multiple port numbers by separating the numbers with commas, and you can specify ranges of numbers by separating the start and stop numbers with hyphens: for example, 1024-6000, 7000, 8096.
8. Click OK.
The new Firewall entry appears in the Allow list. From now on, you can enable and disable the ports used by this game by clicking its check box in the list.
9. Close the Sharing window.
Now, with the appropriate port numbers available on your Mac, you can let the gaming begin.
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