Hi. thanks for all the help.

I'm going to set the lap top with a static IP and then port foward to that IP for the server app.

I was kind of hoping that I could getaway with not doing any thing to the network, like port forward.

I guess whats going on is its connecting to the router and then it does not know which computer to send the data to.

I say this because when using the loop back IP 127.0.0.1 the clien can connect. It only fails when I pass in bogus IP address, that errors are being reported back.

Im really not sure why the client reports connected.

You may also need to enable NAT Loopback on your router (if it supports it, not all do) to be able to connect to a computer on your LAN from within your LAN using your public IP (Many routers will only forward traffic coming from the outside by default)

woo who.

I have my first server running on a none static public IP, only problem with this is the public IP address will change after the router is restart.

ok for testing.

What I needed to do was on the server pc set a static IP keep this IP in the same range as the rest of the network.

then enter the router config and assign the client app to go to the server PC and assign port ranges.

Now the client app can connect to the server pc with the public internets IP address then it gets routed to the assigned port that the server app is waiting on.

Next will be sending messages and that.

And one other thing now I can't ping the server from my other pc on the network like wise the server can't ping them. ???????

is there some thing wrong the internet works on it.

I haven't done this for years but I remember using the Dynamic DNS site no-ip.com which can route your dynamic ip back to you in the forum of a url hence giving you a permanent static ip.

You're probably binding to your public ip from behind your router. Usually you can't do this directly.

Instead bind to your lab up not 127.1 and set up port forwarding and loop back rules in the router to forward to your machine.

Good luck!