Red Alert 2 - net play problems

After getting totally sick of trying to keep my system up to spec for the 'latest' games I have decided to go back and play Red Alert 2 over the Internet but I am having problems which I think are associated with my Panda firewall.

I have allowed the RA2 executable inbound and outbound access to the net and I can browse for available games, I get as far as accepting the game config from the host and then I get a windows saying 'Connecting players' (or something like that) which shows a list of the players who have accepted the game config, there is a check dot next to my name but not the others. Then I generally just sit there and wait, and wait, and wait until the host stops the connection and generally say 'who the f**k is holding up the connection?'.

Initially I thought that it might not be me but after trying to join several games with the same result I have come to the conclusion that it might be me. :?: Has anybody else had similar problems???