Not as serious as it sounds, it's when me and friends play games on the pc across LAN or over the net, we keep getting a message like "network difficultys" or somthing along those lines, we all have genuine copies of the game, all running windows 7 all using the same router, turning off all firewalls. Is there somthing im missing?

I wouldn't turn off your firewall unless you are disconnected from the internet and in a closed LAN.

Possible the router just can't cope with the traffic if it's a basic home style device.

What's the game? Are you all competing within the same LAN?

If are you all gaming locally, what router are you using?

"LAN or over the net" could well point to two completely different issues, but they might well both be related to network latency and your router and/or internet service not being able to cope.

One is LAN the other is over the Internet, but still using the same router, Im b

One is LAN the other is over the Internet, but still using the same router, Im not sure what router it is but it's fibreoptic broadband, what do I need to make sure of when playing LAN or Internet?

Although you are all playing on the same network, chances are you are all connected to a central server on the internet somewhere and this is where the bottleneck is.

Even your fibre broadband only has small upload bandwidth, 1meg for Virgin on the 10meg download service.