Springlobby does not like routers...

[TheThinker]

Hello everyone. I was wondering if anyone is having a similar problem. Here's the deal.

Last night, my bothers and I decided to have a 3 player LAN game using a brand new Belkin router. We each run Ubuntu Intrepid, but were confidant our network could work. After setting up the network correctly, and pinging each other for verification, I used TASERVER.JAR to host a game via springlobby. Springlobby's performance was at a snail's pace when I told it to login to my IP address. So, we decided to turn of DHCP on the router, thinking that it was the culprit, and assigned ourselves our own IP addresses. Voila! We had a 3 player LAN game working. Springlobby worked fine, with the occasional inability of one of us to join a hosted game (which was alleviated with a restart of Springlobby). Overall, no biggie.

So, today is where the REAL challenge begins. We got the network up and running as before, then I used TAServer.jar to run via springlobby. Springlobby's performance was close to freezing point. Naturally I thought the DHCP function was turned back on in the router.

It wasn't.

I then thought that our computers did not have static IP addresses.

They did.

I then thought that we simply did not have a network connection, for some strange reason.

We did. Pinging verified that.

So, we thought that there were two things that could be going wrong here. Either:

1) The router is malfunctioning, which is unlikely.
or
2) Springlobby does not like routers, period.

We decided to try to rule out the router being the problem by just having a 2 computer network without it. Springlobby worked great as it did in our previous 2 player games.

So, in conclusion we think Springlobby is just plain buggy and not meant for multiplayer LAN games in general. Has anyone come up with a solution to get it to cooperate with routers? We had no luck turning back on DCHP on and having an automatic network connection. The network works, yet springlobby acts this way. I'm stumped. Help?

[TheThinker]

Okay, good news! While the causes of this bug in Springlobby are unknown, we found a work-around for it; just get a different computer to host with TAServer.jar. Voila! Instant game. So if anyone else hits upon the same problem as mine, do what we did. Don't know why it works (our systems are identical in their configurations), but it does.

[computerquip]

In network IPs usually are static and changable. Spring lobby LOVES routers if you open a port in your router so the spring lobby can recieve and send data back and forth between data. When you create a game, it should ask you for a port and when you open a hole in your router, make sure and copy the port that you made into that box. Simple as pie.

OR you don't use a router at all and connect the computers directly together which gets complicated if your have more than one computer and you don't have a Network HUB