Internet connectivity shouldn't be required for the event log forward tool, it's a free tool so it shouldn't be checking for license manager either. Anytime I've ever had issues getting the event forwarder to work, it's been a permissions or firewall issue. It installs as a service for the local system account.
If you want to test connectivity, see if you can find a copy of Klog lurking around somewhere, it's a command prompt utility that you can use to send a message to a syslog server.