Screen Sharing, audio, and video chat not working with certain people

Question

My ichat application will suddenly stop working after just a few seconds of starting wither screen sharing, video chat, or audio chat. I get the error message "No data has been received for the last 10 seconds." How do i go about fixing this?

Answer 1

Hi,
This message can be caused two ways.
1) a loss of Internet Connection through a Physical means.
(turning Off Airport card, Pulling out Ethernet Cable, modem or router failure, loss of service from ISP)
2) A router or modem Software intervention.
This most commonly happens in Video chats. The device has a feature called DOS (Denial of Service) which with modern Internet Speeds and Video Streams gets to the threshold where it cuts in. It requires that you turn the feature Off as there is not adjustment in the threshold at which it works.
A similar feature with a similar result is SPI (Stateful Packet Inspection).
Having said that, it very unusual to have it effect Audio only chat or Screen Sharing.
This means the issue could be at the Buddies end.
NOTES:
iChat creates Logs of Connection Failures of which there are about 5 types, caused by various issues in the connection Process.
The 10 Sec Error message covers those things where the connect End but iChat did not receive a "BYE" message (a controlled End to the Chat) or get a failure of another sort.
Basically you were connected properly (even if you did not hear or see the Buddy) and so other event cut the connection that was not iChat related.
Can you do Video chats with any of the 6 names in Table 1 ?
http://www.ralphjohns.co.uk/ContactTesters.html
Some of those will respond to Audio Only invites.
(I just tested 4 of them and three play music and one the Audio form the Jonathon Ive Video)
Do any of those work ?
That will exclude a Modem or Router Issue with DOS or SPI on the remote end.
9:29 PM Wednesday; June 9, 2010
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
Message was edited by: Ralph Johns (UK)
I may receive some form of compensation, financial or otherwise, from my recommendation or link.