That website also reported for me that port 5998 "wasn't responding", but that's not true because I've played the game successfully. I am, however, experiencing the same problem reported in this forum when trying to use my laptop. I'm trying to connect to the first server (Grand creation?) in the list (highest population) and it works on my desktop, but not on my laptop.
I'm using the same software, modified the same way, attempting to connect to the same server, getting the same result from
http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/scan.php4 for both machines and one works and the other doesn't. Go figure. The other factors involved are wireless versus wired, Vista vs XP, and whatever background programs are running that might be different from machine to machine. Any ideas?