Joint Operations and Windows Firewall problem

Hi

I use Joint Operations on my Vista Ultimate 32bit laptop - the game runs
fine, and everything seems OK except for the server list ping rates. It
doesn't seem to get these pings and just reports all servers as N/A.

If I run the game with Windows Firewall disabled then the pings are
successfully shown and all else is good too.

I have gone through an MS step through for the firewall where I set up
custom rules (over and above the existing 2 rules that were automatically
created on installation of the game) - to allow inbound ICMPv4 and IMPv6
Echo requests (and many other variations of inbound and outbound rules), but
none of my attempts seem to have had any effect and the game remains closed
to the ping rates regardless of the rules I have tried.

Does anyone have any ideas of how I can have my game run and show the ping
rates while keeping the firewall running?

I do use a Netgear DG834PN Wireless router, and have tried setting up port
forwarding on it - again to no avail (although, since everything is OK when
only the firewall is disabled - I doubt that the router is causing the
problems)

For example - if I run the game with the firewall enabled, then all is OK
except ping rates are not 'discovered' but I can proceed and successfully
play a game - if I then use the windows key and switch to windows and
disable the firewall, switch back to game, 'reload' the server list then the
ping rates are 'discovered' OK.

The obvious reason for wanting a solution to this problem is that I like to
play on the low ping rate servers and find that I end up on laggy servers
because I can't be selective without the ping rates in the server lists.

--
regards,
Les Hay, Livingston, Scotland