Here's the deal, me and a friend have Red Alert 2. I have XP Pro, he has 98 (first edition). I can't seem to get Westwood online working so we set up an IPX network to play eachother. Using the nifty features of pro, I set up a VPN to accept connections through my NIC (We both have roadrunner) I have TCP/IP, MS Client, IPX/SPX, File Print Sharing, QoS, Network Monitor Driver. He has VPN client installed, and connects to me through Dial-up adapter (VPN is under there, he types in my IP where normally a phone number goes, logs in w/ name and password i set up) I was so surprised at how seamlessly it worked, I have never networked anything without a hitch. We run RA2, go to our Network, start a game.. Really slow, choppy performance. I think it is bad ping, but it could be low-bandwidth caused to a bad setting somewhere. He is "logging onto network", and I had him disable software compression. No luck, and XP is so freaking hard to get to the old menus i'm used to in 98 for me to see what settings I have.. ANY HELP?

If you can't answer that.. is there any other way to set up our two computers to use an IPX over the net connection so we can play? The problem COULD be avoided just by connecting a different way..

I had to speak up on this one. I run XP and a co-worker of mine runs Win2000. We decided to run a network game of RA2 but both of our routers are not capable of routing IPX (TCP and UDP only). I setup a VPN connection to receive his incoming call (and you're right, it was somewhat seemless). We played three games in a row with no problems and no lag time. But (and you knew I was getting to this), we both utilize cable modems with very low latency times. We suffered no appreciable lag times. Unfortunately, I believe you problem to be bandwidth. Unless you left something else out, I don't see how you (personally) can decrease you latency. I'm assuming that you tried pinging back and forth with your friend while connected to see in which direction the high latency is coming from? You also didn't mention hardware (i.e. does your friend have a slower workstation than you? Sorry I couldn't be more help. PS> Do you really feel the need to run QoS?

lol we both have cable with a ping of 30 (we live 3 blocks away from eachother) He has a slower machine but not THAT slow.. I didn't know if taking QoS would hurt anything or not.. I was curious if having his DUN max speed set at 10,000,000 hurt anything? Is there a way to slow that down to like 1,000,000 so that way it could free up some resources?