A few people, including myself when I first tried to do it, are a little confused at how to set LFS up for LAN use, because of this I decided to write a short guide, feel free to correct any mistakes, or move to a different location if need be.
How to play LFS on a LAN
Firstly you need to decide which PC will HOST the game, go to this PC and find out its IP address, you can do this by going to START, RUN, CMD, IPCONFIG /ALL.
Note down your IP address, it should be in the range 192.168.0.0, if it isnt then you either need to set it to a proper LAN IP range (192.168.0.0), or if you have XP (certainly PRO, not sure if it works in HOME) you can assign more than one IP address.
Once you have the IP address changed and/or noted, you can now proceed in starting LFS on the HOST machine, click the Multiplayer button, then click Start new game, you will be presented with this screen.
Notice at the top you have 3 options, LOCAL, INTERNET and HIDDEN, as you are making a LAN only game click LOCAL, game name can be anything of your choosing, but CAN'T be blank, password can be left blank, IP address MUST be the same is the IP address on the host machine, and port needs to be a port that is open on your firewall, here I have 63392, yours may be different but you MUST note down which port you use.
Select the other settings to your preference and click GO, once the game has loaded go to each CLIENT machine and proceed to join the game on each CLIENT machine.
Again, the CLIENT machines MUST have a valid IP range, if not change or add as described earlier.
Click Join Specific game, next click LOCAL NETWORK, enter the HOST IP address,the HOST port and the HOST password, now click go and you should connect to the host machine, if you don't and get client connect either your firewall is blocking the traffic on either HOST or CLIENT machine, or your IP address/port selections are wrong.
It certainly works on a LAN, but it just takes a little time to get it running.
How to play LFS on a LAN
Firstly you need to decide which PC will HOST the game, go to this PC and find out its IP address, you can do this by going to START, RUN, CMD, IPCONFIG /ALL.
Note down your IP address, it should be in the range 192.168.0.0, if it isnt then you either need to set it to a proper LAN IP range (192.168.0.0), or if you have XP (certainly PRO, not sure if it works in HOME) you can assign more than one IP address.
Once you have the IP address changed and/or noted, you can now proceed in starting LFS on the HOST machine, click the Multiplayer button, then click Start new game, you will be presented with this screen.
Notice at the top you have 3 options, LOCAL, INTERNET and HIDDEN, as you are making a LAN only game click LOCAL, game name can be anything of your choosing, but CAN'T be blank, password can be left blank, IP address MUST be the same is the IP address on the host machine, and port needs to be a port that is open on your firewall, here I have 63392, yours may be different but you MUST note down which port you use.
Select the other settings to your preference and click GO, once the game has loaded go to each CLIENT machine and proceed to join the game on each CLIENT machine.
Again, the CLIENT machines MUST have a valid IP range, if not change or add as described earlier.
Click Join Specific game, next click LOCAL NETWORK, enter the HOST IP address,the HOST port and the HOST password, now click go and you should connect to the host machine, if you don't and get client connect either your firewall is blocking the traffic on either HOST or CLIENT machine, or your IP address/port selections are wrong.
It certainly works on a LAN, but it just takes a little time to get it running.