Starcraft Brood War Help

I jsut reinstalled starcraft recently, just for fun cause of all the hype about starcraft 2 I wanted to relive the glory. So i went on battle.net but whenever I am in the game I can only see the host speak. When I am in a channel I can see everyone, but once I get in the game set up (where you pick teams and what not) and the game, I cant see anybody speak. Also, I have a pretty good computer, and it does not take a lot to run starcraft, but it always lags. I am on a netgear router and my friend thinks it cause my ports are not forwarded. Anyone got any ideas why these problems are happening? Thank you