Untill VERY recently i have been unable to connect to the majority of LFS servers.
I am not sure what caused it since nothing settings wise has been changed for a very long time now. I'm not exactly sure how long it has been like this since i have been just connecting to specific games (which it still can do) but i noticed it just under a week ago.
I currently have version 0.5V and my service provider is Virgin if that helps at all. I only use the Windows firewall, but like i say it has only happened very recently and worked fine with all these settings for a long time.

Here is an image of the screen i get after the end of the host check, which takes about 20x longer now.

Virgin has a very little known packet shaping / throttling / blocking policy, which prevents access on certain ports - one of which may be the default LFS server port.

Whilst this cannot be guaranteed to be the cause, it's highly likely. Alternatively you have an issue at your connection, which is preventing you from contacting half of the world. However, if this was the case, you'd find general surfing to be screwed as well.

In this circumstance you might want to check with Virgin, and see if they are starting to block more ports. If so, you either have to convince them to stop being cocks, or to move providers.

Quote from the_angry_angel :

If so, you either have to convince them to stop being cocks, or to move providers.

Well put! Ok, i need to exchange a few e-mails to find the solution then.
Just to clarify, i can connect to other servers if i just join a specific game and put in the details there, but when i want to see them all it wont let me.

Quote from Quint999 :

suspect over zealous traffic shaping to be honest ..

I'm going to have to play devils advocate on this one;
Every man and his dog can figure out how to use torrents nowadays and this is having a hugely negative impact on ISPs the world over. Recent adoption of VOIP, Vidcasts and streaming media have not helped either.
Most ISPs tend to factor in a certain percentage of its user base as low users that will not use their alloted bandwidth in order to reduce costs (both internally in forms of wholesale pipes req'd and externally in the form of subscription fees).

When more and more of those 'low users' begin to use, or over use all of their alloted bandwidth the pipes are all of a sudden over subscribed.
This is what is happening with the majority of ISPs in the UK right now. They either face bankruptcy by just sucking it up, raise prices to compensate and get more pipes or implement traffic shaping in some form or another to stem the usage.

Quite a few have opted for the later option because it is the most cost effective and has less of an impact on end users than the other two options. Unfortunately, simple systems aren't enough because of throttling counter-measures such as bit torrent encryption. To combat this ISPs either need to be super heavy handed and just block traffic (which appears to be the case with virgin) or implement a more intelligent solution such as the ellacoya platform which still lets most traffic through, but prioritizes certain traffic based on current network usage. Ellacoya does however need constant tweaking to ensure that traffic is prioritized correctly.

/2p