Age of Empires Multiplayer problem

Hello, I have a problem. I hosted an AgeOfEmpires game through the internet yesterday that my brother joined without any problems. But today when I did the same thing he could only find the game, but he was unable to connect. What is the problem?

 

Do you play Age of Empires through www.zone.com ??? Also did he allow the connection through his firewall?

controlmind

 

He has his firewall completely turned off. And we don't play through the zone. We use the Internet TCP/IP connection. I give him my ip address and he finds my game, but when he tries to connect it says "Unable to connect".

I've forwarded ports 2300-2400 TCP & UDP and port 47624 TCP.

He has no problem joining and hosting games with others. But I can't join his games, and he can't join mine.

 

It might be the difference betweeen game versions.. im not sure

 

Defo not that, we have exactly the same version and we managed to play the night before

 

ive also been experiencing problems with aoe trying to play tcp/ip network games with aoe. seems to be hit or miss for me when trying to connect to people outside of my home network. i've only gotten it to work once, which is frustrating. heres the checklist i've gone through.... if anybody can think of anything else i'd appreciate it

-same game version (1.0c -- crucial b/c networking problems were addressed in both 1.0b and c patches)
-correct ip addresses
-router set up as virtual server to forward necessary ports for game ( using a belkin 4 port/wireless router that has AOE as a preset game option)
-same game settings (ie no mods made to population limit etc)
-firewalls initially set to just allow the program access, later I ended up just making sure they were off for all parties
-no interference from antivirus programs - disabled or uninstalled completely (have had problems with other games with my norton) <-- dont forget about this, a lot of programs like AVG and Bulldog will sometimes block internet traffic without telling you
-no zone alarm, black ice blah blah blah

confusing is the other person will see the game, be able to join the game, but when we try launching the game it will drop the player who's not hosting, tried with different people hosting. I can play no problems (except for the occasional out of sync error which will usually occur within the first 2 min of play and drop the game) with everybody on my private network.