Hi! I seem to be having a problem connecting to a friend for a game of Age of Empires 2, through TCP/IP. When I had dial-up, we connected fine. When I got DSL, with a router, we couldn't connect through TCP/IP anymore. I checked the Microsoft knowledge base, and there were some specific things to try for solving issues on AoE2 multiplayer games that involve DSL and routers. I opened the Microsoft ports for AoE2 using virtual servers within my router settings, which is what they suggested. It didn't work. Eventually I went to command prompt, pinged 127.0.0.1 and the packets were at 0% loss. I pinged my own home computer's IP address and it said 100% loss (does this mean anything?). I pinged the laptop in my household which is also connected to the router, and got 100% loss, but that to me was funny because my brother and I can play IP games between these two computers. Then I pinged my friend and got 100% loss, and he pinged me and got 100% loss. The only firewall I use is from Norton Internet Security 2004, but before DSL, it wasn't a problem so it shouldn't be even now. Windows firewall and the router firewall (from BEC technologies) are both off! In ipconfig /all, IP routing is enabled, and a couple of "NetBIOS tcpip"s are disabled. Should they be changed? I read that some companies make their routers "unpingable" to reduce "wasted bandwidth". Could it be the case with mine? Can anyone make sense of my situation? If I can successfully ping my friend with 0% loss will I be able to play the game with him? Thanks!! Joe

Ok, whoever is hosting the game has to setup a port forward on their firewall to forward connections on that port (the game's port) to the internal IP address of the PC hosting the game. If a "virtual server" doesn't work, they'll have to use a firewall rule. How to do it is going to depend on the firewall itself. I have a D-Link router and do exactly this for Diablo II occasionally when my friend connects to me to play it together. I tried a virtual server and it didn't work so I did what I said above, made a firewall rule. With my firewall, I tell it to allow all external (WAN) connections on the appropriate port to be forwarded to the internal IP of the PC I host the game on. When we're done, I disable this so nobody can connect to me remotely as a safety precaution. In order to connect, you start your game, select "network game" or whatever it's described as in your game (not familiar with that one myself) and type in the TCP/IP address of the host's external connection (not their internal IP) and click "connect".

I haven't had time to try this yet, but I can't wait. Thanks a lot for posting!! Joe