Failing to host a game with direct connection

[Tyladhras]

I tried to host a game for myself and another player over the net just using direct IP connection.

I'm accessing the net through a wireless lan (hub plugs into the phone socket, then broadcasts wireless).

My firewall has all the necessary exceptions.  My anti-virus isn't doing anything.

However, when my friend tries to connect he gets and error saying "Server connection was lost or could not be established!
Disconnected And Not Discovering".  I get the same trying to connect to him.

I'm seeing a lot of other people with problems about ports - not sure if that's the problem but I know virtually nothing about ports/port forwarding/whatever.

[x4000]

I would suggest the following reference that I wrote for Tidalis as a good starting point: http://arcengames.com/mediawiki/index.php?title=Tidalis_-_Network_Play

I'm guessing that your issue is one of the things in the network troubleshooting section there.  If not, hopefully that would at least provide some idea of more details on what to provide.  Are you sure that's a hub and not a router that's plugged into your phone line?  Given the problem you're describing, I'm betting that's actually acting as a router and is doing NAT, which would require port forwarding.  Granted, I could be wrong, but that's the most common issue by far.

[Tyladhras]

That PF checker program is now saying the port is open so that should do the trick.  Thanks!

[x4000]

Awesome! My pleasure.