Can't Connect to one person any more even though we can connect to others

Question

I'm hoping that someone has an idea of what i can do to remedy this situation.
I have been video ichating w/ my wife from work for many months. (she does work for my office from home, so it's ok) She has a MacBook Pro and I have a MacBook. Things worked great until about three or four weeks ago. Now we cannot connect w/ video OR audio at all. I can connect w/ anybody else on my list from work and she can connect w/ anybody else on her list from home. But when we try to connect w/ each other, we get the error -22 bandwidth problem.
How is it possible that it is only our direct connection that does not have enough bandwidth when we can use our same connections to video chat w/ others??
We are both current w/ updates on all of our software.
HELP!
MacBook 2GHz Intel Core Duo   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   2 GB Ram

Answer 1

I give up,
There are so many routers, osx, macs and settings that it is difficult to find a repeatable bug.
It just feels like that there are three factors that cause connection problems.
And then different combinations when you look backwards.
So what I have to say is that I cannot pin it down or remotely claim I have firm reason to believe what I say is right but I do see some "combinations of plausible suspects causing the same error message"
The first Macbook Pro was a hard one, refined, improved etc but a non connector.
And it was very hot, uncomfortable hot. I think the designers had been a little to enthusiastic speeding up the processor time.
Now the heat wouldn't be a real problem, the amount of calculations within a very short time might have caused the probook to
be the king of not connecting. There was a certain issue with a card that time so not impossible. Another variable caught the eye.
The graveyard of routers. Understandable, you hide your router and hope you never have to see it again. They do age though, fast.
Updates and firmware did bring some relieve but the Apple chips are something completely different then when tests showed all was good with your good old router. Yet my G4's did respond and my G5 did not. Something totally different caused the error but it gave the same error tekst. it was me who managed to give my computers the exact same identity. Well the error message was: "user does not respond" and I was convinced that it was some kind of bug causing the universal iChat "does not respond" mistery. The port-forwarding was the only fair chance for connecting, and with endless patience and effort Ralph and a lot of others almost personally fixed every possible router combination sold by Apple. The design and coding assignment however was complete the opposite, plug 'n play. Somehow our neighbor was iChatting just by pointing at his router and we did not respond.
In the beginning the specs looked good, it worked fantastic when you managed to avoid to get one or two "show stoppers" in your setup.
A lot of bandwidth, the right sort of router for your specific setup (os version, router software and maybe the right camera and much more)
It is a miracle that some of us got it right the first time. It ran flawlessly if you had the right combination of settings, hardware and software.
And oh boy, what a pain if you got them all wrong. I've been busy at night so to say.
But there is hope, I've seen Macs go online right out of the box (10.4.8) and it looks promising. They all went full motion video chat with no change to settings or any other effort then clicking on your language etc. Splendid. I dare to say that you need to put an effort in it to get it wrong.
The new 802.11n routers that are leaving the shops are fast and steady, 10.4.9 is ready, and in the distance there is a cat waiting that is awesome. I think I already know which airport/router/musicstore/videoshop I'm going to buy.
Just hope Apple doesn't forget to sync the time with MS, it could take a while to debug.
Regards,
JP
Some tips if you can't wait to chat:
1st, it makes no real difference who your ISP is in this case as your issue is not ISP related.
2nd, whether your computer is named or not in the file sharing prefpane should have no bearing on how well your computer hooks back up to the wireless network following sleep.
3rd, PPPoE is not a setting for your wireless network and shouldn't be a setting for any other computers on the wired network behind your router....the router is the only device that might need PPPoE parameters set in order to communicate with the DSL Modem --- and these days, not all DSL Modems are using PPPoE.
D-Link has been in the past very interesting in how they comply with the overall 802.11g/b standards.....some of their default settings can cause issues for the Macintosh WiFi cards because Apple has implemented the standards in a standard way while D-Link chose to implement them such that they caused the least interference for the way that Windows is implemented......which is not quite to standard.
On your router (using the html embedded control pages) you should be able to fine tune the wireless network performance parameters by hooking your computer to the wired LAN port(s) in the back of the router, turning off your Airport card and then checking the Network prefpane to ensure that your computer has an IP address assigned in the range of 192.168.0.xxx ----
Now open your browser and send it to http://192.168.0.1 then log into the control page with the default username - admin - and no password.
This should bring you to the built in control pages Home......check to see if your router has an Advanced tab and if so, select it, then select the Performance button ------ this should be where you can fine tune the wireless network parameters that D-Link has set to their choice for defaults.
The setting that I seem to recall causing the most issues for Macintosh wireless networking in the past was the length of the Preamble ---- I believe that the choice that should work best is the Short Preamble......
The other setting that would best be adjusted is the one that uses any proprietary accelleration techniques to "double" the speed. On a similar vintage DI-624 I had to disable the "Super G" mode in order to keep the wireless network robust for all clients.
I hope this rambling response helps get you back on track.
So in summary, I think your new MacBook CD2 wireless card should be just fine.......your big challenge is in fine tuning the performance parameters that D-Link chose for the DI-524 so that your router can work in a more standard mode and then your new laptop should hook up as advertized.
When you upgraded the firmware, did you make sure that you had the proper version for your revision model? The D-Link support site Firmware Update page lists several different revisions to that model.
mb2.33hrz   Mac OS X (10.4.8)   (38518353)|