IChat AV is hopeless try Skype

Question

Before I left for Iraq I installed the latest OS, 10.4.9, on the powerbook G4 at home, as well as buying a Logitech quick cam. For several days I tested iChat AV between that machine and the one I brought with me, a MacBook. No problems communicating with AV between the two macs. When I got overseas I started getting the -8 errors. I read all of the forum discussions and did everything, the Quicktime streaming, the iChat bandwidth limit, the port number to 443, the firewall settings, deleting the com.apple.ichat.plist preference file. I sat on the phone and instructed my son step be step to do the same things at his end. We both updated the OS to 10.4.10.
We finally gave up on iChat and downloaded Skype. We have no problems communicating with Skype, thank goodness.
I hope that Apple puts some serious horsepower behind fixing this problem. The guys that are responding on the forums, Ralph Johns and Defcom, are trying but none of their solutions worked for me. It seems to be a problem with the program. I have clicked the "Send to Apple" button about 100 times so I hope someone's looking at it!!

Answer 1

Okay - so heres the deal - my mom who is the type to grab on to things and no let go has spent about 6 hours on the telephone with Apple and Linksys. So yesterday afternoon when I got home and she did a video chat with me the darn thing worked.
Now the Apple help was basically she said return my computer to default or I am taking it back - so they had her do a complete re-install. Once that was complete she called Linksys and spent another couple of hours on the phone.
I don't know what they told her to do or what they changed but it is working now.
The only thing we did different is they had her setup the port forwarding to any address under 50 - so she is using 192.168.2.5. Oh they also had her change the IP to 192.168.2 - So now we have video and audio and can not really explain why.
In trouble shooting it I actually turned off all my port forwarding and DMZ and it still works. Go figure. Hopefully it will continue to work and we will not have any more problems - at least that is my hope!