How Do You Host Your Own Online Server?

Hello,

My friends and I have been thoroughly enjoying AoE2DE together, but there are times when the public servers render our games unplayable. Without third party software, is there any way one can host a game session from their PC and invite their friends to play over WAN? I've tried port forwarding and proper DMZ configuration to no avail. I also tried boot commands +OverrideAddress=X.X.X.X and +DirectIPConnectivity to no avail. Thanks for any and all help!