I looked up a few posts about that and everything I have read post dec 2016 says that they started building that into the firmware so it shouldn't be an issue. There isn't even an option to turn it off anymore. Before I go further in to changing things in my current router i dug up one of the few routers I have lying around that aren't in use (consumer routers).
I tried an old net gear WNR1000 router (changed config addresses, changed IP subnet and address as well). Same problem. On this router, i turned off ALL security and ONLY the server and one client was connected to it with no other traffic and I assigned it it's own channel as well. I also have an old linksys i'll be trying as well as it will have even less security features (which doesn't matter if i'm turning it off anyway). This whole time, no firewalls on the server or client as well. I'm still not at ad-hoc yet. At this point it's either a settings issue or ... What else? All other software is working. Just for fun I threw a minecraft server on there to see if it would work. No issues.
GRRR!!!!
Just to re-iterate. I can get to the character selection. After that, it tells me the server has stopped responding. What else could cause the hand-off to not occur?