Minecraft Forums

SO, being pretty set that me and my boyfriend were going to play Minecraft via LAN tonight- I went through the steps I had in the past to set up a LAN server for the two of us. After having to update his minecraft, download an updated minecraft_server.exe, update his java, then having to redownload the server.exe file because it was corrupted- and the chat log appeared BLANK-
I finally set everything up inspite of appearences of the server not working(still blank), and we were both playing on a LAN server hosted by him.

Except it began to crash every 2 minutes for my computer- with the accompanied message: internal exception: java.io.ioexception: an existing connection was forcibly closed by the remote host

Frustrated, but determined- I downloaded the minecraft_server.exe for my computer and began to host as well. The exact same issue.

I just want to play minecraft LAN :l

Halp pls. I have windows 8, he has windows 7. Updated Java and updated minecraft and minecraft servers.

Yours truly,
Tired&disillusioned

I'm basically having the exact same issue, only it happens sporadically sometimes we can play for a while with no incident, other times it constantly drops.

From your symptoms I'd suspect that you have a device on your LAN with a duplicate IP address. When all 3 devices (your two minecrafting machines and the third) are talking, packets get mis directed, and when the third machine receives a packet for a TCP connection that it didn't make, it tears that connection down. Then one of your two machines will see a 'forcibly disconnected' message.

This typically happens when someone statically configures a device with an IP address that your DHCP server actually 'owns' and dynamically hands out.

Found a solution to this problem in another thread. When you open your world to LAN - and the other player(s) in multiplayer see your host, instead of clicking it, copy the ip address (xxx.xxx.x.xxx:xxxx) and input it into 'direct connect'. When we did this we had zero drops, so this issue is clearly not a duplicate IP issue, it's something to do with how Minecraft is LANning computers together.

Minecraft LAN seems to have issues...Glad you fixed it!

Using Direct Connect is for when your client isn't receiving the game announcements.
You've already said that the issue is sporadic. You were just lucky this time.

Except that it's worked every time now. I guess it could be something like the DHCP switched our IP's and you are right, time will tell, but for now, problem solved.