Are there any security risks in opening ports for IChat AV?

Question

Hi all,
I'm trying to get the network admin on a primarily Windows network to open the ports needed to get iChat AV working, but he is saying it's dangerous to have those ports open, not knowing what kind of effects there would be on a Windows network.
I am the only Mac user there so as you can see it poses a considerable problem.
Any help or advice or assurance from network admins to confirm that it is OK to open those ports would be of great help.
Thanks in advance.
AW

Answer 1

Andru08:
Don't expect your network admin to open any ports. He won't want to put his job on the line for you, nor should you expect him to.
You MAY be able to route iChatAV over a VPN, although I am still unsuccessful in doing so. I have found that iChatAV works over AIM servers when both source and target are inside the corporate LAN, even though the call registration and setup is initially managed off-net at AOL and Apple (i.e., AOL login and SNATMAP and all that stuff). Theoretically, it would seem like if the outside machine had VPN with the appropriate certificates issued by your network admin (e.g., your home machine if you were wanting to be able to talk work-to-home), the outside machine would act no different than if it was on the corporate LAN.
In real life, I still haven't gotten my home machine to communicate successfully over VPN to/from work, although I can ftp, afp, telnet, vnc, ssh, imap, smtp, etc., with no problem whatsoever over VPN. Just can't ichat over VPN. So, like me, you're probably SOL until a future version of iChat solves the VPN issue, if that is ever even explored by Apple.
In the interim, you may just have to have your work go with yahoo messenger or msn messenger on PCs to AV conference to remote offices -- we use something like that at my work for AV conferencing and it traverses VPN just fine to/from our remote offices -- from user desktop/laptop to user desktop/laptop -- just don't know exactly which package we use or how to set it up on Wintel boxes, though, ...coz' I'm a Mac guy. I suppose I could find out for you, though, if you were interested in a Windoze solution...
If any readers out there have actually gotten iChatAV to work over a VPN, boy, do I (and probably Andru08, too) want to talk to you!