After poking, twiddling, praying, yelling, pleading, reading and yet more yelling, I cannot seem to get my render nodes to work.  I'm hoping that someone here can tell me how to set up my program/render nodes.

Right now I'm using C6 Pro installed on my laptop, with render nodes on my desktop and file server (another desktop PC).  They're all connected on an ethernet hub with the following settings:

Laptop:
Network IP: 192.168.0.101

Desktop:
Network IP: 192.168.0.1

Fileserver:
Network IP: 192.168.0.2

All are running the zonealarm firewall, which I know how to configure to open ports. 
My scene is approximately 500mb, with everything saved internally. 

Are you rendering from a batch queue? If so, then it should work. When I render on my network, it does take awhile for the other two nodes to assist with the render, sometimes it will be 2/3rds of the way through a frame before they kick in.