IChat won't send or receive photos

Question

Hi,
I have a problem with iChat. I'm using it with an AOL account, and it has been working great. But a month ago, photo sending started to failure. I only have one friend on my friend list, because the photo sending feature is so convenient and snappy. If I try to send a photo, the loading circle on the photo is blank and in about 1-2 minutes, iChat will say "Connection to the AIM server timed out. try again." (I'm from Finland, so I have Finnish iChat, so the translation is a bit bad.)
And if my friend tries to send photo, he gets an error which says: "Waiting for acceptance of Mikko...". So I suppose that the fault is somehow in my computer. Oddly, problems started if I remember correctly when I downloaded IM+ Pro for my iPad. But we've tried to reinstall our AOL accounts, remove AOL from IM+ Pro but no luck.
There are also several more errors which can occur, such as "Could not directly connect. The connection suddenly disconnected." Sometimes when I woke my MacBook from sleep, iChat doesn't automaticly connect. Me and my friend have 10.7.2.
Okay, so there's the problem. Any solutions are greatly appreciated, and thanks in advance!

Answer 1

HI,
In total is using Bonjour, Jabber, AIM and Yahoo and A/V chats in iChat it will want to use 20 or so ports
AIM Logins (AIM And Apple @mac.com and @me.com) use port 443 in iChat 6
However File Transfers (Files send separately by dropping the file on the Buddy';s name in the List  or in a Text Chat) change port to port 5190.
The Internet also uses different Protocols (FTP to Load Web Sites,  HTTP for Web Browsing other apps use either TCP and UDP as a rule and iChat uses both at different times)
Most routers will allow all ports up to and including port 1024.
Ports above this need to be allowed in some form  (there are different methods).
Enabling UPnP in a router will cover the Port and the Protocol  (In an Apple Base Station this is Port Mapping Protocol that does the same job)
If you are using Port Forwarding to open ports this does not always list the Protocol.
Port Triggering will need to list Protocols.
9:19 PM      Friday; January 20, 2012
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
  iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Lion 10.7.2)
 G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
 MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
 Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images."  No, Seriously