Could not contact server

[Omertoso]

Hello.

I'm trying to play Trackmania 2 Stadium with two friends of mine. When any of us makes a server and the other two try to join it, at first it tries to connect for a second, and then the error message in the title appears. Simple as that.

We have tried local network with Hamachi, but we have not been able to see each others' servers. We have looked up this issue in the good ol' Google, only to get links to the TrackMania forums with threads from 2006 telling us to check our firewall, do port routing, change ISPs etc., which really shouldn't be an issue nowadays.

We have added each other as buddies in ManiaPlanet and we can join servers not hosted by us. The error message is so simple I think we're just missing something silly, yet here we are at our wits' end.

Anybody know anything about this?

[TMarc]

Actually, especially because of increased security, this is even more an issue!

By default, incoming communication is blocked 1) at the router 2) at Windows firewall 3) at internet security suites and antivirus software.
This is why you allways will have to allow this manually.
1) create port forwarding in your router
2) open the corresponding ports in your firewalls
More details here: http://wiki.maniaplanet.com/en/Frequently_Asked_Questions#How_to_configure_your_firewall_for_use_with_ManiaPlanet

If you don't want to do that, you will need to rent a game server where this is all prepared already.