I’ve tested project I linked above both in a local network and outside it, and never reproduced problem. If you download that project, test it on two different systems not on local network, with Steam enabled on both systems, it shouldn’t show you a ping of 9999 unless there is a firewall or port problem preventing that part of connection.
If you have no problems with that, but do with a separate project, please send a link to your project to me and I can look into it further.