Dedicated Server at home, stuck at "Joining"

[Gibblets]

I hosted a dedicated server on a second PC here.
When I try to join from my main PC, it gets stuck on "Joining" and will not time out.
I can't see any join errors in the logs. (Though I don't know what I'm looking for.)

Any help would be appreciated.

[thedude182]

Is Windows firewall running on the dedicated host pc?
Are both pc's in the same network?
How is your game finding the server, directly by ip (lan to lan) or is it finding the server in the multiplayer list? (lan to wan)?

[Gibblets]

It's half solved: It did end up working, for whatever reason rebooting it allowed us to join.

A buddy got on, couldn't join.
Rebooted the server.
We both can join. We played for an hour or so, and another buddy gets on, can't join, same issue. He reboots his game and he can join.

Both PCs are running Windows Defender, nothing 3rd party to Windows 10.
Both PCs are behind the same router.
I was connecting via external IP, through the in-game direct join. (did not use local IP like 192.x.x.x w/e)

[thedude182]

Those are 2 different paths. Local only should go through ip connection. In same LAN, no NAT or Port Forwarding necessary. From LAN > WAN (external ip) youll need to at least open up port 2100 in firewall and map port 2100 from the WAN to the LAN's local server IP.