Somehow I have managed to get it working. Not exactly sure how; which really bugs me, but it works. Below is some of the things i tried and was going to post for more help when it started working. I suspect it was iptables, however i had flushed iptables several times with and w/o rebooting and had no success. The final & successful connection attempt was by using the access key.
I now have another unrelated issue i am trying to resolve; which i will start as a new topic.
Thanks for the replies. I have checked the wiki and everything looks as it should. I have flushed iptables; reconfigured the media network. Did this by unticking the box; ok button; exited/restarted jrmc; reticked the box and went through the setup. I do not have a firewall setup (afaik) on ubuntu yet. just checked using "sudo ufw status verbose" with the reply: "status: inactive"
i have tried connecting via an access key and ip:port combo. @BryanC i am guessing port number you provided "52299" was a typo i am using default which i believe to be "52199"
other items worth mentioning: 1.) when i try from the client to connect using the assigned access key; the error message at the top of the window states there was a problem loading HPSERVER; which I believe was the name of a library on my old (and offline) server. 2.) can access W7 from ubuntu no problems.