Joining and hosting multiplayer minecraft servers

Hi! My name is Pam. I'm an Independent Advisor and I'll be glad to help you today.

Can you check your privacy settings please?

https://account.xbox.com/en-US/Settings

Make sure that under Privacy, Xbox One/ Windows 10 online safety, everything is set as ALLOW and EVERYONE.

Note: If you own a child account, make sure to change the settings using the parent account, okay?

Make sure you are doing the following:

Multiplayer Options

Minecraft (Bedrock) supports the following multiplayer options:

• Locally hosted multiplayer world via LAN or Xbox Live
• Realms
• Servers (unofficial, third party server software)

Locally hosted multiplayer world via LAN or Xbox Live

Any world can be a locally hosted multiplayer world, and accessible to other
Minecraft players.

To start, create new world or load an existing one. Then, select World Settings (pencil icon) →
Multiplayer → Multiplayer Game. If all players are on the same local network, you may also toggle on
Visible to LAN Players.

Other player(s) can join the world by navigating to the Friends tab and selecting the world.

Hello Fluffy Fox,

Welcome to Xbox Community Forum. Thank you for sharing your concern with us today and we hope that all is well.

I understand that you have questions about multiplayer gaming in Minecraft. Let me see how I can assist you with this concern.

Joining LAN and Joining a Server are two different types of Multiplayer options in Minecraft.

To answer your question #1, if I'm playing on a friend's server, can other people on the same network still join me, even if it isn't my world?

As long as you have internet connection, and the other player knows the server information

When you are Joining a server, this means that you are joining a server thought the internet.

Join a server:

• On the Servers tab, click a server.
  

Add an external server:

• On the Servers tab, click Add Server and enter the necessary information.
  If you need help locating this information, contact the server owner.
  

For LAN games

• Each player that wants to join must be connected to the same network.
  

• The selected host device must be capable of running a server of the chosen world.
  
• Everyone joining must run the same version of the game as the host.
  

Please see full article here : How to Play Minecraft Multiplayer – Home

For question #2. Hosting a LAN server, by design should allow people to see your game when you are on the same network and I believe this is by default. On the other hand, when doing some research, there are issues that comes out when people are not seeing the Host of the LAN server. The reason is their network settings is set to public and private is disabled. I'm not saying that this is the proper solution but a work around is to set you network to remove public and private option in network discovery.

The other option is when creating a new world

Create new then choose the Multiplayer option turn on Multiplayer, Disable the Visible to LAN players option. The game should not be visible from other local network users.

Windows Firewall Settings

Open Control Panel

System and security>Windows Defender firewall.

Locate Allow an app or feature through the Windows defender firewall.

Click Change Settings

Look for the Minecraft apps and disable or uncheck public and private access for Minecraft.

Once we receive your answers to the questions above, we may suggest additional troubleshooting measures.

Looking Forward for your next reply.

From Minecraft/Microsoft -

https://minecraft.net/en-us/article/minecraft-multiplayer-server-safety

“Join Multiplayer Games” Settings
If you have your settings set to block joining multiplayer games, you can’t join any multiplayer games in Minecraft, including shared local worlds, Realms or servers. To enable multiplayer in Minecraft, make sure this setting is set to ‘Allow.’

However, just like ASCllnaut, that setting was already turned on for my children. In other words I'm in the same boat, we can play on the LAN but not on a realm.

At times im unable to join multiplayer games ie forza ( keeps failing to join/host) and bf4 says im in a server and connected to a game but im sat at the home screen with it not allowing me in.