ISight camera will not connect...

Question

...from my network anyway! I have firewall turned off on my MBP, my wireless router settings have firewall settings off AND my ISP (DSL) router firewall settings are off. It works on my network at the office but any time I try to connect (one-way or otherwise) from home, no dice.
Anyone have any tips?

Answer 1

Hi Ken,
In this case the modem itself is routing to your LAN.
This will almost certainly mean that the ports needed for iChat will have to be opened. (See Rj's first post re Firewall and Ports)
By default most domestic devices that route have ports up to port 1024 open. This allows common apps like Web browsing and mail to work "Out-of-the-Box".
iChat uses a total of 29 ports for iChat to work with AIM, Jabber and Bonjour.
They also use two interent protocols as well.
TCP 5190, 5220, 5222, 5223, 5298
UDP 5060, 5190, 5297, 5298, 5353, 5678, 16384-16403
More on why and which does which here http://www.ralphjohnsuk.dsl.pipex.com/page3.html
In your Network Preferences it will list a "router" IP towards the bottom. This should be the default IP to use in a Web Browser to access the modem's set up pages.
This page http://portforward.com/routers.htm may list your device. By clicking it you will come to a list of Applications and Games that you can also click on.
This will lead to a specific set of instructions for that APP.
Currently that site does not have the right ports for iChat (it used to).
However at the top of the page it will give you instructions on how to access the device with default User ID and Passwords as well as the IP.
Next we have to know if the 192.168.xxx.xxx IP that you computer gets is given out from the modem by it doing DHCP.
(you have one level of DHCP to the ISP that by the nature of the modem stops there)
IF the modem is doing DHCP to the LAN then we have to make sure it or the Wireless router are not doing it.
iChat does not like it when two devices on a LAN are doing DHCP (The nature of routers is that they allow the passing of addressing data through. This creates subnets.
Modem to Computer via router
Router to computer.
As the router is "closer" you only see this IP in the Network prefs. In some circumstances you may want to use two IPs, but iChat is not one of them.
If we know the Modem make and Model and the same for the wireless router we could point you at more direct info.
The goal is to have only 1 DHCP server and one instance of NAT
Network Address Translation (NAT) is how the modem and router move data arriving on one IP number to the number(s) on the other side of the device. There are about 6 main ways of doing this which in iChat's case can lead to problems betewwn either end. Port Forwarding, Port Triggering and DMZ are all use NAT
Now unfortunately differnt routing devices do different things when you change the settings.
Turning Off DHCP in an Apple Airport device makes it a Wireleess Access Point. It allows any addressing from the modem to control the LAN.
Most other devices, if you turn Off DHCP, require that you set Static addresses.
Static addressing limits the data from one device to the next.
To acheive the goal of avoiding NAT being done twice you may need to use Static addressing with UPnP (a non NAT way of opening the port) between the devices.
Modem <-> Router <-> computer
This is two subnets but they are closed and independent of each other.
I know this is a lot of info. It can be shorter if we know what devices you have.
12:32 PM Wednesday; June 14, 2006