Me and my friend Flame77 would like to host our own private server, but we don't want to use any external things. (Like hamachi, for example) We have a very powerful computer and it is just me Flame77 and his cousin. (And the occasional guest) But the softwear always fails us. Every time we start the server we get it started within 2 seconds (litteraly) and then try to connect. We get an error "could not connect". Please help!
If you are trying to do this from home more than likely it is a port forwarding issue. A good place to start is: http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Tutorials/Setting_up_a_server under the section "Firewalling, NATs and external IP addresses". Also I have moved this thread to "General Minecraft Support"
I had the same problem, most people get a modem that dosen't require needing to be set up for port forwarding. Therefor most tutorials don't includ how to do that. That could be the problem, Youtube is a good place to look on how to fix this.