need help with joining a net game

I went back to an online game I was coding a few months ago and I was able to launch 2 instances of the same game on the same PC.

I could join the net game with the command joinnetgame().

Then about an hour later it said 'multiplayer game not started' I had not changed any code.

I can join the game with startnetgame()(with the custom windows gui)
but not joinnetgame() for some reason.

can anyone help?

here is the code I am using:

For g.gnet_Server=Each gnet_Server
DebugLog g\server+ "-server"+g\ip+"-IP"
joinstatus=JoinNetGame(g\server$,g\ip$)

DebugLog "join status: "+joinstatus

joinstatus always equals zero
the servername and the IP appear on the debug window OK

I found that if I used FPSNET I could host and join a game on the same PC with no problems

Hmm, maybe the IP adres needs to be converted from/to DottedIP() ?

thanks,