You guys are great! Thank you so much for the tips and suggestions. I have switched back to the Netgear with the D-Link now acting as a paperweight

I went ahead and tried the port forwarding again but to no avail I'm starting to think I need to set up a static IP address for my laptop to host the game. I think I've got the port forwarding setup correctly, but what's throwing me off is the IP address that shows up for me in this forum, it's random (likely because of DHCP) and starts with a 69, not a 192.

I'm attaching a couple more screenshots, hopefully this may shed some light on things. The first is my setting of port forwarding on the Netgear router. The second is the IP Address info that comes up in the Mac OS X Terminal program when you type "ifconfig" The research I've done says to use the first IP address on that line that I've attached. I also checked TCP/IP and it also has 192.168.1.3 as the address.

Just for the heck of it, I'm pasting a list of the options that show up on the left side of the Netgear router setup window. I couldn't find anything for firewall but maybe there's something else I should adjust? UPnP is set to "on"

    Setup Wizard
   Add WPS Client
Setup
   Basic Settings
   Wireless Settings
   Guest Network
Content Filtering
   Logs
   Block Sites
   Block Services
   Schedule
   E-mail
Maintenance
   Router Status
   Attached Devices
   Backup Settings
   Set Password
   Router Upgrade
Advanced
   Wireless Settings
   Wireless Repeating Function
   Port Forwarding / Port Triggering
   WAN Setup
   LAN Setup
   QoS Setup
   Dynamic DNS
   Static Routes
   Remote Management
   UPnP
   Traffic Meter

Thanks so much again for your time and help. I don't want to wear out my welcome on this thread and unfortunately I think my setup is cursed, lol. I tried the setting you suggested but still no go (removed the virtual server setting and added the application setup). The only other thing I can think is something to do with the firewall, creating some rule to allow access to port 6260. But who knows. I'm gonna do some more research from time to time, hopefully figure this out before EA decides to finally do a remake.  

Hi again,

Well, I guess the 6260-6261 solution would have just been too simple. I thought it might be helpful to share a screencapture of my port forwarding setup. I used the terminal program on the mac to figure out my computer's IP address. But now I'm wondering... I have a DSL modem and the Wireless D-Link router is hooked up to that. I wonder if that could be part of what's causing me problems.

Thanks again for your help.

Hi Chuckie Chuck,

Thanks so much for your replies! It seems like this is doable afterall. The thing that struck me was something very simple, you put 6260 to 6261 for your port range. I've been using 6260 to 6260. I wonder if the solution could be that simple. It usually is something so obvious that you want to kick yourself. I'm going to give that a try tonight first, it's a long shot but who knows. I'll follow your other advice if I hit a roadblock but what you've provided in your two posts is far more than I could find scouring the web.

If you're curious, here's a link to the D-Link router: http://support.dlink.com/emulators/di524_revc/h_wizard.html

I had daisy-chained the routers but am currently just running the D-Link to simplify things. Fingers crossed, gonna see if I can make it work...

Hi all,

Well, I love M.U.L.E. and Planet MULE is a blast. I was able to join a game the other night without a hitch, thanks Stalx, MuleSizeMe and mamaT for the game!

I would love to host games too and I am running into problem after problem. I've tried google, troubleshoots, this forum, portforward.com, portmap, swapping wireless routers, pc, mac... the list goes on, but no luck.

Has anyone found a step by step guide to set up hosting or has anyone set up hosting that would be able to help me out. There are four of us who are interested in playing, both in joining and hosting games, if we could only get the hosting bit figured out.

I have a mac with OS 10.4.11, also a PC running Windows XP. The routers are a Netgear WNR2000v2 and a D-Link 524. If any of those raise red flags to anyone please let me know.

Thanks!