[Frugle]

has anyone here been able to do a video chat with a MPB or a MB and iChat AV ? I have owned my MBP for 3 months now and after probably 15 tries i have NEVER gotten it to work...

I either get the "" did not respond, or other random errors..

both parties have done the things listed here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93208

any other suggestions? its such a cool feature to work so badly.

[analogika]

connected through a router?

[Frugle]

yeah, but all the firewall settings are set properly

[Neub Detat]

yeah, quite often as well. You have to set ur router and firewall properly.

[analogika]

Originally Posted by Frugle

yeah, but all the firewall settings are set properly

You might have to set up port forwarding as well.

If the router's a D-Link device, then the only solution is probably to throw it out and replace it with something useful. I gave up trying to get the iChat going via a D-Link router after six months.

[Cadaver]

I use my Airport Extreme basestation both as a router for the machines on the wired LAN and for wireless machines, too. No problems with iChat here, and no special setup was required.

Don't forget, your iChat problems may be originating at the other end - it may be your recpient's problem, not yours.

[analogika]

Indeed.

I threw out the ****ing D-Link and made my Mac mini a wireless base station, and everything worked with zero set-up - automatically.

[Tenacious Dyl]

I have a crappy D-Link router, and so does my friend (who lives about 10 minutes away). He just got his MacBook Pro a couple days ago, so we tried it out for fun, as neither of us had used iChat AV before, and the first try it worked great.

Didn't do anything but open the app, click the invite, and accept...

[analogika]

See? The damn things don't even reliably *not* work.

Go figure.

FWIW, the one I threw out is the DI-624

[villalobos]

Originally Posted by analogika

See? The damn things don't even reliably *not* work.

Go figure.

FWIW, the one I threw out is the DI-624

Never had issues with that router and iChat AV. Never even had to do anything as a setup either. I think the problem comes form iChat itself which can be pretty finnicky, for no good reasons.

[iREZ]

ive noticed that i have problems with my mbp and ichat when my imac is logged on to the same account as well. i have to therefore log off the imac and then im able to use the mbp just fine. i agree that ichat av is still pretty finicky..but its better than nothing.

[Frugle]

hmmm... I know this is a stupid question, but I don't know the answer. but how come iChat cannot use the same port for chats and video/audio? why does it has to be so complicated? it seems that 80% of household routers won't let ichat AV work.

[pcummins]

We've had issues with iChat AV which usually boiled down to badly configured/supported network hardware (ADSL modems, routers, etc) or software that was out of sync enough to cause issues. (10.3 vs 10.4). Last case was a DLink ADSL modem which was turfed in preference for a Netgear Wireless ADSL modem which works fine now and is cheap enough to make it not a big issue.

As for same ports for chat/video/audio - this is because audio/video is a late addition to the IM protocols and would probably interfere with non-standard clients (ie, if a client expects only IM, then gets packets of video/audio setup, it may cause the app/computer to crash unexpectedly). Some sort of intelligent scalable protocol would avoid this, but in general protocol overengineering is never very popular (think OSI vs TCP/IP).

Companies set up the UPnP standard to make life easier (and in general, it does) by allowing an application to automatically tell the router to open and redirect specific ports to allow specialised applications (like iChat AV) to work. Prior to this you'd have to figure it out yourself and log into the router, set up ports and fix your computer to a static (internal) IP address. Now that routers support UPnP, that's no longer necessary.

The main issues arises in that people with older network hardware or routers will not support UPnP properly (upgrading is worthwhile, companies get slack on firmware updates). Ideally, conferencing applications should have better diagnostics software to track the issues down a bit better rather than "it failed, game over".

[analogika]

Originally Posted by pcummins

We've had issues with iChat AV which usually boiled down to badly configured/supported network hardware (ADSL modems, routers, etc) or software that was out of sync enough to cause issues. (10.3 vs 10.4). Last case was a DLink ADSL modem which was turfed in preference for a Netgear Wireless ADSL modem which works fine now and is cheap enough to make it not a big issue.

D-Link, huh?

[pcummins]

Originally Posted by analogika

D-Link, huh?

Pretty much. One of the really really early USB + Ethernet router/modem combos sans UPnP (so old I can't remember the model even). The Netgear DG834G that replaced it works fine and does what the client wants so no problems there. Since ADSL gear is so cheap now (as compared to when it first came out), it's hard to argue to keep old gear around if it's not working the way you want. I could have reprogrammed the D-Link to do iChat, but the 4 port Ethernet switch + wireless on the Netgear sealed the deal for this client. One of my friends had one of the D-Link DSL-G604T's - replaced with a Netgear DG834G due to the constant whine the D-Link was emitting. When you get down to it, Netgear seems to understand aesthetics, updates and stability...

[tooki]

:Moved to Applications, since this is a pure application question, in no way hardware-specific.::

tooki

[analogika]

Originally Posted by pcummins

I could have reprogrammed the D-Link to do iChat

It definitely was not possible with my DI-624, at least not with the other ports I needed forwarded.

Interestingly, BitTorrent throughput also drastically increased when I threw out the router...despite all relevant ports having been forwarded, or so the bastard thing said...

[Frugle]

Originally Posted by tooki

:Moved to Applications, since this is a pure application question, in no way hardware-specific.::

tooki

sorry, it seemed hardware specific since it is specifically for the macbook/macbook pro, I have never had this issue on any other hardware. just this computer.