A couple of network tips for using the Forum Converter

Firewalls

If you are accessing your phpBB database from behind a firewall, be ware of that you need to open up the ports that the MySQL server is listening to.

Web Hosting access

Your Web Hosting company maybe have a policy to not letting you access the DB Server directly from "outside". In that case you can ask them to open up that possibility.

Port number

In case of that your phpBB/MySQL server is not using the standard port number, you can specifiy the port number explicitly in the connection string by using the port argument: "port=nnnn"