you know this is probably unrelated and even offtopic, but maybe your loop back if being used by these games, maybe your lo isnt set up on the router ? i have a linksys dsl router, and god forbid if i try to access my website or any services running with the external IP address, i will lose all network and internet connectivity for about 2 hours. there is only one windows client on my network now, which will be gone shortly as soon as i get my dad switched to linux. with linux its no problem i just have to remember to make sure i set my hosts file up for the domain name to point to the internal IP address. i know windows can use a hosts file but i havnt taken the time to figure out where it goes. anyway, after all that maybe it is a network configuration problem? sorry if my post didnt help give any ideas.