My friend and I are trying to play a TCP/IP game over my local LAN, but when he selects my game and clicks OK after the IP entry dialog, it just hangs. After about 20 seconds it just quits back to the main menu. The strange part is that I have the exact same game files on two other computers and those two computers have no problems joining/hosting a game with each other. We are running SMAX + Alien Crossfire v2.0 + Win2000/XP compatibility patch + unofficial patch.
I took a packet trace on his machine using Network Monitor and found that all packets are going to and from my router's IP instead of the hosting PC. We tried using DHCP on his machine for IP resolution as well as statically assigning it, same behavior. I took a packet trace on the host machine and that machine actually receives and transmits a few packets to and from the client, but subsequent packets from the host to the client begin getting routed to my router's external IP instead of to the local client. Ipconfig shows all the correct details on both machines, gateway, subnet mask, etc. No firewalls are enabled. Other games like Starcraft and Pocket Tanks work fine over the LAN. All proper background Windows services are running for DNS resolution (at least to my knowledge). The same behavior occurs if he hosts the game as well. I'm not sure what else we can try. We could always just play using the other two computers, but I can't back down from a challenge. Any thoughts?
I took a packet trace on his machine using Network Monitor and found that all packets are going to and from my router's IP instead of the hosting PC. We tried using DHCP on his machine for IP resolution as well as statically assigning it, same behavior. I took a packet trace on the host machine and that machine actually receives and transmits a few packets to and from the client, but subsequent packets from the host to the client begin getting routed to my router's external IP instead of to the local client. Ipconfig shows all the correct details on both machines, gateway, subnet mask, etc. No firewalls are enabled. Other games like Starcraft and Pocket Tanks work fine over the LAN. All proper background Windows services are running for DNS resolution (at least to my knowledge). The same behavior occurs if he hosts the game as well. I'm not sure what else we can try. We could always just play using the other two computers, but I can't back down from a challenge. Any thoughts?
