If you're having trouble with joining servers or sharing to LAN, this thread should help by providing some solutions for common causes. This is my first time writing a comprehensive troubleshooting guide on this forum so if you have any feedback please let me know.
1. Hosts file
What's a hosts file and why should I care?
How do I fix it?
How do I know if this worked?
Repeat the steps above and check if the changes you made to the file have applied.
2. DNS
What's DNS and why should I care?
How do I fix it?
How do I know if this worked?
Go to https://1.1.1.1/help and it should say you're connected to 1.1.1.1.
If it doesn't, open PowerShell, run `Clear-DnsClientCache`, reboot and try again.
3. Firewall
What's a firewall and why should I care?
How do I fix it?
4. Launchers and Java
Why would this matter and how do I fix it?
5. VPNs and proxies
If you're using a VPN or proxy, it might be blocking certain traffic. Try disabling it and see if it fixes the issue.
6. General router settings
(I'm sorry if you've gotten this far and still having trouble.)
What's a router?
How do I fix it?
7. Adapter settings
What's an adapter and why should I care?
How do I fix it?
8. Antivirus
If you're using a third-party antivirus (not Windows Defender), it might be blocking certain traffic. Try disabling it and see if it fixes the issue. If it does, add an exception for Minecraft and Forge. Contact your antivirus provider for further help with this.
9. Docker
For server owners, if you're using Docker, it might be worth trying to explicitly enable IPv6 support. This is usually done by adding `--sysctl net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=0` to the `docker run` command. Another thing you can try is adding AAAA records for your server's domain name to point to the IPv6 address of your server, assuming everything else IPv6-related is already working of course. Also refer to the Firewall section above - it's very important that if you block IPv6 for some reason, that you do it for both incoming and outgoing traffic and not just one direction.
10. Finale
If, after everything here, you're still having trouble that only seems to affect Forge, please ping me (Paint_Ninja#6054) in #squirrels on the Forge Discord server so I can find out what's going on and why it's happening. I wrote the PRs that added full dual-stack networking support to Forge and want to make sure I've covered all bases. While I did extensive testing, there's always the possibility I missed something that only affects a small number of users. This applies to anyone having trouble - players, server owners, launcher devs...