why, hi there Fenris!
I haven’t read any of your parodies as of late. Am I missing them or have you stopped writing them?
But I’m disgressing. As it turns out, I am the miserable owner of a linksys router (a networkeverywhere very similar in functionality to the more known BEFR041). And just in case you were wondering, Linksys routers suck. Mine is the most problematic piece of hardware I have purchased since the audio excel 16 I had on my Pentium 100 eight years ago.
I have basically been battling that damn router since I bought it. And sadly enough, I have become an expert on the topic from all the tinkering I did with it. Hell, I even uncovered a really weird bug. Basically, everytime I download a file that contains a certain hexadecimal value that corresponds to my IP, the router will convert that value to another on the fly thus corrupting the file. Of course, this is a rare occurrence (you’ll get it every 20 Gb downloaded or so) so nobody actually knows about it. But I’m disgressing again…
The DMZ function of the router performs fairly well most of the time, but it is faulty. When dealing with direct connections with people that are also behind routers, the incidence of problems increases dramatically. I assume you already deduced that. the UPNP forwarding is also not 100% compatible with windows which creates even more problems.
Ok, now that I have convinced you that you made a very bad purchase and that you shall suffer for all eternity for it, I’ll tell you the cause of your problem. your computer has an internal IP which is 192.168.1.xxx that can only be reached by computers (your router is a stripped down computer) in your Local Area Network (LAN). Your router ,on the other hand, has two IPs: one internal which is 192.168.1.1 and one external that is reachable by the outside world. When you initiate a netmeeting session, your computer sends data to your friends computer and that data includes the IP that your friend’s computer should answer to. Now your computer is stupid and sends 192.168.1.xxx and the router is supposed to do it’s job and convert that to your external IP adress before sending it to your friend. But it’s a linksys router so it’s probably playing strip poker with a couple netgear routers in Japan and not paying attention to the packets it’s forwarding. And that is why you cannot have the crystal clear audio and smooth high resolution fullscreen video videoconference with your friend.
Now that I have bored you, flattered myself and patronized you, I’m actually going to suggest some solutions (hear! hear!):
1- You can try forwarding the ports you mentionned earlier on the linksys configuration menu. Be sure to try that in all port forwarding, port range forwarding AND port triggering. have fun trying all the possible combinations and harassing your friends to do the same.
2- This is stupid but try alternating the active caller. You probably tried that already.
3- Alternate videoconference programs:
-microsoft messenger’s embedded videoconference
-Dwyco
-ICUII
-CuSeeMe (you have to find an old free version. They want you to suscribe to use the latest one)
If none of these pleases you, you can find more choices HERE
If I can be of any further assistance, do not hesitate to email or instant message me at gozu@hotmail.com . It would by an honor to help the great Fenris. (feeling the pressure yet?)
PS: you STILL haven’t answered my two emails 
) ? Or alternate programs that do the same thing as Netmeeting, but don’t want to use every port in existance?