IChat AV progress but no cigar

Question

I've been trying to troubleshoot the problem with iChat AV video chat for about 2 months. With the help of many posters to this forum I've made some progress and would like to share that information in the hope that someone may have additional insight.
Until my sister (East Coast USA) and I (West Coast USA) upgraded to 10.4.8 everything was fine. She on a Powerbook (PowerPC) 15 inch and me on either an eMac or Powerbook (Powerbook) 15 inch. She has Cable with approximately 1.5 - 3.0 Mbps. I have DSL with approximately 200 - 384 Kbps. We both connect through Belkin wireless 802.11g routers to our respective modems. We have the router firewalls ON and Mac OS firewalls ON by default.
For more than a year we never had to adjust any of the above settings. We just started up iChat and could videochat through AIM without any problems. After the upgrade to 10.4.8 we were able to send an invitation to begin a video chat but then the wheel spins, eventually times out, and an error message appears "There was a communication error during your chat..." Do you want to send a report to Apple? Yes or No? I don't want to be cynical here but.....I've been sending error reports for more than 2 months now....
After many weeks I finally did the not-so-easy experiment of connecting my eMac directly to my DSL modem with an ethernet cable (bypassing my wireless router). It worked! I was able to videochat with my sister without any problem even though she was still connected via wireless router. The bad news is that when I reconnected my wireless router and restarted my eMac with wireless connection I could no longer videochat with my sister.
Though not a complete solution I thought we had narrowed the scope of the problem to my wireless connection. Thanks to the helpful suggestions of many on this forum too numerous to mention by name I made the following changes which seemed to work:
1. I kept the Mac OS Firewall ON and created a new configuration with 5060, 5190, 5297, 5298, 5678, 16384-16403 open in TCP and UDP.
2. In System Preferences/Quicktime/Streaming I set Streaming speed to 256 kbps.
3. In iChat preferences/Video/bandwidth limit set to "none" and iChat Preferences//Account/Server Settings port set to 443 instead of 5190.
With these settings and my eMac connected via wireless router I was able to videochat with Defcom1 on AIM in the UK (Thank you Tony!) and I also successfully connected to the appleu3test01 and 02 sites. I do not know whether Tony and the Apple test sites are connected via wired or wireless connections.
After all of this I thought I would once again be able to videochat with my sister when I was connected to the internet via wireless router. No such luck. Once again, I got the same "communication error" when trying to initiate a videochat with her.
In one last, desperate attempt to fix the problem my sister and I reasoned that maybe it would work if we changed her TCP and UDP ports, Quicktime streaming speed, etc. as I did (see above). Unfortunately, that did not work. We keep getting the same error message. It seems that when both of us are connected via wireless router none of the previously mentioned changes seem to work. The only time we've had it work is when one of us is directly connected via ethernet to our broadband modem.
After having the benefit of wireless iChat AV for so long it is really a disappointment to have this problem. What ever happened to Plug and Play?
I hope someone from Apple is reading this. As a long time advocate and shareholder you need to know: This is not good for customer loyalty!
Meanwhile, if anyone has any additional suggestions while Apple figures out how to fix this, please let me know. Your help would be very much appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Ralph,
The other end is configured exactly the same as my end; same hardware and software and configuration (I helped my sister get her computers and wireless networks installed and maintained). Only difference is that she has Cable broadband and I have DSL.
Neither of us has VoIP. I once installed Skype (don't remember exactly when but I think it was this past summer) but I've never used it. I've seen posts that Skype can cause a problem with iChat but the ports I've opened should still enable iChat AV to work even if Skype is installed. I haven't tried uninstalling Skype and I don't know if there is an uninstall application.
I checked the Belkin web site and there was a new firware update posted in September. I haven't tried installing it yet - I have a question in to Belkin to see if they know of any conflicts with 10.4.8 and if they recommend installing the firware update.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions related to Skype.
Thanks,
Geneland
Hi Geneland,
The Virtual Server is the name this device has for
Port Forwarding.
Sometimes having a listing in here and having UPnP
activated the same time can be be problem. As you
say it worked before I would not worry about this too
much.
From what you tell me it does not obviously seem to
be your end.
Can you tell me how the other end is configured ?
Also does either ISP involved offer a VoIP service ?
Or do either of you have an VoIP service or equipment
10:45 PM Thursday; November 23, 2006