Multiplayer start-up issue

[Beam]

For a couple of days I'm having a strange problem with starting Multiplayer now. The problem occurs when starting multiplayer from the main menu and selecting Play by e-mail. The message from NIS is that Civ3Conquests.exe is attempting to access the Internet.

Settings:
- UDP (Outbound)
- Remote Address: 255.255.255.255:6073 [scratch]
- Local Address: 82dot161dot162dot66:2303 (which is port 2303 on my personal IP).

And every now and then:
- UDP (Outbound)
- Remote Address: 255.255.255.255:ssdp (1900) [scratch]
- Local Address: 82dot161dot162dot66:5813 (which is port 5813 on my personal IP).

The number of attempts has multiplied over the last couple of days and now it won't even allow to load a scenario and create savs for PBEM's. :(

I don't suspect NIS because it is just reporting what it sees and there are no probs with other apps. It doesn't matter if I block or permit the attempt.

Does someone has a clue? And what does it need from 255.255.255.255?

[Plux]

Just a plain guess, but maybe you have another nic (network card) installed besides the device that has your internet IP? And maybe that nic mistakenly has an IP-address in the 255.255.255.x-range? Maybe you swapped the most common subnet mask (255.255.255.0) for the IP when filling in the values. That's a whole lot of maybe's, but you never know, right? :)

The outbound traffic are broadcasts a network, prolly looking for hosts or clients for a game. Now I'm not sure if broadcasting to 255.255.255.255 means it's broadcasting to a 255.255.255.x net, or just the network that your nic is in like 192.168.1.x or whatever (I always found subnet mask theory very confusing [crazyeye]). In the first case, check your nic's IP-settings. In the latter case, you might just try to disable the nic, when you're trying to start a game. I know a bit about IP stuff, but I'm not a big expert so please don't shoot me [slay].

Most important question: did you change anything in your hardware/software config at the moment that this began?

[akots]

May be try installing some firewall like ZoneAlarm. It is free and will block wahtever activity you do not want. :)