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Here is a comprehensive outlook on how to host and join network games on Football Manager 2007. The FAQ is for Football Manager 2006, but nothing has changed.

Hosting a network game.

Hosting a network game on Football Manager 2006 is easy. We have made this step-by-step guide to take you through how to get going.

1. Click ‘Start New Game’ as you would for normal play, and create your game.
2. Add yourself as the first manager
3. Click on ‘Settings’
4. The tickbox next to ‘Run as Server’ needs to be ticked. Put in a name in the ‘Name of Server’ box.
5. Click ‘Confirm’ at the bottom.
6. Click on ‘Game Status’ and you should see a ‘Server IP Address’. You’ll need to give this to the people who you’ll be playing with so they can join your server.
7. Wait for all your peers to join. See next section on how to join.

Joining a network game.

Joining a network game is just like the old CM games.

1. Obtain the IP address from the host. Check the previous section on how to get this.
2. Open Football Manager 2006 select ‘Join Network Game’
3. Click on ‘Join Other’ and then enter the aforementioned IP address. Click OK.
4. This should take you to the host’s server and into the game. Select “Add Manager” and join in!

Frequently Asked Questions

There are various issues that can cause you problems when trying to connect to online games or hosting a network game on your own.

1. Firewalls
Make sure there are no (software or hardware) firewalls blocking network traffic on the ports used by the game you are running.
FM series of games use port 10093 and 10094 (yep: both TCP and UDP).

You will need to allow traffic on this port both incoming and outgoing. How you do this depends on the firewall you are running. If you are running a software firewall, you can do this from its rules settings / set up procedure. If you are running a hardware firewall box (ie a router/modem with built-in firewall) you will have to connect to the firewall, log in as administrator and set it up.

Portforward.com offers help and tutorials for many popular routers and firewalls – it’s worth having a look if you’re in doubt about what to do.

2. Routers

If you are connected to the internet through a router (just a router, or an adsl modem with a router, etc), you may have to re-direct traffic from your router (which has the public internet address seen and needed by other computers on the internet) to your computer (which may have a local network address which is only visible by people on your local network, and which you cannot use to let other users connect to your server through the internet).

How you do this depends on the router you have, so please consult the appropriate documentation. To set it up, you will need to connect to the router (normally done through a web browser window) and log in as administrator (admin).

Please note that if your broadband connection is a “bridged broadband” connection then you don’t normally need to do this. Set up the allowed network traffic on ports described above in point 1. (A bridged broadband connection is when your computer and not a router box gets the actual internet address. In this case you already have a valid internet address, and all traffic is forwarded to your computer – if a firewall is present, you will need to set it up to allow network traffic on the required ports.)

3. Game version

It is vital that all players have the exact same version of the game running. This means ensuring that all players have installed the same patches (if any). We recommend that you always install the very latest patch available for the game you are running.

4. Database version

It is equally vital that all players have the exact same database on their local machine. This means that if you are running a game with a database update (be it official or unofficial), you must all have this database installed on your computer, even if you are only a client and not the server.

5. External IPs

If you’re the server then by default the Football Manager will try to look up your proper external Internet address (IP) so it can display it in the Game Status screen as it is useful to know this IP when serving games over the Internet. There are some times the external IP is not the same as the “internal” (or “local”) address – namely when you are running the server from behind a router, firewall or adsl modem that acts as the interface towards the ISP (in other words, the actual connection isn’t directly plugged into your computer, but a box that is then plugged into your computer via another cable). In these cases looking up the external IP is useful.