Recently, I seem to lag out often during almost every game I join or host.

I've just hosted a game with 5 other players, and slowly one by one they all dropped out of the game "due to network drop".

I've never had this problem before, and was wondering where the problem is coming from if anyone would know about this.

my aanet ISP reported problems with optus hardware or something >.> but i dunno where you are so thats pretty pointless.

Did you install any alpha tester patch?

What would that have to do with it?

some alpha patches have online play removed.

I was thinking...if ALL ELSE FAILS, turn to...

www.hamachi.cc

Yup!
Just get it set up, read the tutorials, get your friends on it, join them, and start a LAN game.