I have to agree with Sam, above, the Xbox Live system with Halo 2 has worked very well for me. I think the record time for getting into a game for me is somewhere in the neighborhood of 4 minutes.

I hate to sound like a jive-ass turkey shill for Microsoft, but this is something which has worked without a hitch, from day 1. I might even pay them real, live money in January to continue the service. Just maybe!

There's nothing special about my internet connection, either-- Southwestern Bell ADSL in Metro St. Louis, NAT through a LinkSys WRT54G with a stock config, and an ethernet cable to a stock, unmodified Xbox console. Bada bing.

If I had any gripes at all, it would be with the rating system in respect to how it handles new players.

Once players begin to accumulate experience points, matchmaking makes most games very enjoyable and challenging- there's a mix of better and worse players but never by too much... the system seems to be subtle enough that it will alternate between putting me in a match as a high-rated player and matching me against much better players, on-off-on.

But, before new players gain an adequate dataset of experience point data, they are a wildcard and will sweep through matches blazing a trail of dead spartans. That's not so much fun.

It would be nice if there had been a way to gauge player skills in the single-player campaign before the got online so they would overstep all of the lesser players and eliminate the unpleasantness which their ascention to the proper rating causes.

But obviously I have been able to connect and play well enough to form this opinion. I'm sorry you're having trouble. You can link up with my gamertag "El Cloaca" if you want and see if you have better luck with a larger party. Maybe that would help.