Online Play Issues

I've tried to play online several times with a few different games in recent memory, and I've had issues each time. Different people were involved so I assume it's a problem on my end. I've allowed incoming and outgoing access, and I've tried port forwarding...and I still can never connect. Any idea what I might be forgetting? Just some general thoughts.

Before you forward any ports, you should set up a static IP address. If you don't, everything else changes nearly every day.

Alright, I'm pretty sure I didn't do that. I'll google it of course, but are there any tutorials/guides that RMRK can recommend in the meanwhile?

portforward.com

Has instructions for many routers and stuff

Port forwarding is required only if you're the host, i.e. other players are connecting TO you. If you're connecting to other servers, you don't need to port forward.

Thinking "well I will anyway, maybe that will help" is completely wrong - it's absolutely not neccessary. People always seem somewhat mystified by port forwarding and I never understand why.

All connections on the net are client/host, even "p2p" connections. One of those people is the "host" of that connection. You don't need your own port 443 to be open to use HTTPS, and you don't need port 80 forwarded to your machine to be browsing RMRK now, on port 80.

Since you mentioned port forwarding, that means you're behind a NAT device, which means you don't need a software firewall. NATs are essentially hardware firewalls.

Often times I am the host, Roph. : O