[Ted]

I was under the impression that the UPnP services had to be running in addition to the hardware being UPnP capable AND enabled for the whole thing to work. In other words (for example) if I was using Azureus (with UPnP enabled) and was hooked up to a router (also, with UPnP enabled), and running Win 98, it (the UPnP method) would not work - I would have to use the port forwarding method. So what you're saying is the UPnP method for the situation we have in this thread (Azureus and a router) would work on a Win98 computer (for example)?

EDIT: "Leave it to M$, of course, to write a program that requires UPnP at the OS level." <-- Is MSN Messenger the program to which you refer?