Apple Discussion Boards.

HI,

The Apple Discussion Boards have undergone a revamp on the weekend or the 11th -14th November.

It looks like they have a few teething problems.

I am certainly getting the return to a blank page after posting an answer. This makes it very difficult to spot any glaring errors taright away. I type very badly at times.

In some areas I am getting NO Data responses when tru=yig to post and navigate.

Today (15th) there are no Levels being shown against any user.

The Level 4 lounge, a source of useful info about what is going on also does not seem to be up and running at the moment.

Hopefully all will get sorted soon.

Ralph

PostGreSQL info

Hi

If you have PostgreSQL and want to use iChat this page may be of some help
http://www.postgresql.org/docs/7.2/interactive/kernel-resources.html

Ralph

Tables Sorted.

HI,

The tables (see previous post) have been temporarly sorted with adding a Font clour to all text.

Ralph

Tables In the Blog.

Hi,

The tables in the Blog seem to display white font colours on a white background.

This seems to be in spite of any edit I have tried on the older posts.

I will correct as soon as I work it out.

The Text can be seen with a Click and Drg to highlight.

Sorry for any inconvience.

Ralph

Link Corrected

Hi,

The link to the Pics about iChat 3 has now been corrected.

It was a Upper/lower case problem with the name of the folder for the pics pages.

Enjoy chatting.

Ralph

New Error Message and solution

This one came to me by email 28/09/2005

** -Invalid parameter not satisfying: (index >= 0) && (index < (_itemArray ? CFArrayGetCount((CFArrayRef)_itemArray) : 0))

This one appears to be associated with cocoaAspell, See this link at MacOSXHints. Searching for any bits that might be active with Spotlight is useful.. It appears the SpellCatcher was the original Utility that was deactivated in this case. Thanks to Susan F. Epstein who alerted me to this problem and Ryan Mathus for the link to MacOSXHints. Susan worked through looking for active files and deleted them from the Home/Library/Services.



Ralph

Upgrading to Tiger/iChat3

Ok We will start with loading Tiger and iChat version 3.0

From Panther

There are or were serveral Add-ons and applications avaiblable to Panther users of iChat that are not compatible with iChat 3.

These following need to be deleted.

iCAR - An Add-on that posts an Auto response Away message (produces a 1 fps result in a Video chat)

Virex for Panther - An Anti Virus app avialable to @mac account users (Produces the 1 fsp problem)


iChatUSBCam for Panther/iChat2.x - A Add-on utility for using iSight or USB cam with iChat2.x (Incompatible with Tiger/iChat 3)

iProfile - An Add-on for producing a profile on the AIM server that ichat 2.x could not do (not proven to be a problem but now not needed).

A clean install of Tiger (not Archive and Install) produces the best results.

But any install should also check these Tiger settings.

First, UPGRADE to 10.4.2 as this gets past many Connection issues that became apparent with the basic Tiger (10.4) and iChat 3.0 It updates iChat to version 3.0.1

Check Settings


Don't be complacent that you have not set anything different.

There are several new things in Tiger that may trip you up.

These are worth looking at:

Mac Firewall. Now includes the ability to Block all UDP traffic in the Advanced button (System Preferences > Sharing >Firewall tab then the Advanced Button).

Also can now open UDP protocol for ports where as the Panther one only did TCP (Check any old Panther settings you Added to the presets).

The ports should be:

Tiger TCP and UDP Ports For Mac Firewall
Method	TCP Ports	UDP Ports
iChat over AIM	5190	5060, 5190, 5678, 16384-16403
Bonjour	5298	5297, 5298, 5353
Jabber	5220, 5222, 5223
All Ports	5190, 5220, 5222, 5223, 5298	5060, 5297, 5298, 5298, 5353, 5678, 16384-16403

QuickTime. This has a change in the name of the Connection Speed tab to Streaming (System Preferences > QuickTime) Check this is set to be equal to your connection speed (the download one if this is faster).

Date & Time. Not conclusively involved but worth eliminating. Set a Network Server and the correct Time Zone.

Apple Remote Desktop. If this is active in System Preferences > Sharing > Services tab it causes problems for iChat.

Next, test the actual speed you are getting from your ISP.


http://www.dslreports.com/stest

There is a table here of the speeds you need:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301050

The one you get linked to in the Help menu is wrong.

Other Known Problems

There are several other applications that iChat 3 does not seem to like.

folding@home This is a application that uses spare processor time to help find protein chains for a University.


PostgreSQL This is a data base application that can be reset to allow more processor time for iChat. See here http://www.murraywilliams.com/blog/archives/000046.html

Lotus Notes Some people have reported problems with this.

Make sure any Add-on Video cards or input PCI cards have up to date Firmware

Thread on Miglia.

IF you are still having problems I would do Routine Maintenance Tasks as laid out here.

Lastly, some routers/modems are SIP aware and give different results in iChat 3 compared to iChat 2.


This is due to the Operating System changing (like a new computer connecting to the modem) rather than iChat.

See www.ralphjohnsuk.dsl.pipex.com/page4

Ralph

Potted Computer history

For Tom,

My first taste of anything to do with computers was in 1977 when I went back to college here in Britian. This was a Further Education college that offered GCSE 'A' Level exams as well as other vocational and higher qualifications.

I started to do three. I lasted a term (Sept to Christmas) whilst trying to get a grant. (First person in Dorset to stuffer the first round off Education Grant cuts). This included computing.

I have no idea now what the computer was. I know it was a hand-me down from somewhere.
It had been pleaced in a room that was too small for it. The card reader was in one room and a printer (14") was based in yet another. The computer almost filled the room. It was taller than my 6ft (181cm) and about 4ft square at the base.

My course started with us having to learn BASIC. We had to type the cards out which obviously got punched and then hand them in to an assistant who ran them through the machine. The computer was not specifically programmed to run BASIC and did so under an emulation. Consequently it sometimes took days to get stuff back. In the term I was there I had just about managed Add,ubtract, Divide and Multiply. High level stuff I know.

When the Sinclair group broght out their Spectrum (sometime in the '80s), I had a 16k (yes a memory of a whole 16k) one. It had the rubberised keyboard that it was famous for. I learnt to programme it it it's own version of BASIC and to some extent in it's machine code. Lots of time also spent playing games in 8 colours. It stll works. Programmes were loaded from a tape recored and stored on cassette tapes.

There was then a big gap until 1991 when I started my nurse training.

Here, the School of Nursing and the local Poytechnic joined together to offer the new type of nursing qualification. (Project 2000 for those interested). (The two bodies later amalgamated to form a University).

This was my introduction to the Mac. We had an introductory seession. I was placed in front of a Mac plus and given a A4 (8.25 X 11.75 inches) with some simple instructions and told to "explore". The instructions were to use ClarisWorks (System 6) so that we could learn how to write our essays on a computer.

Despite there being several Mac labs all over the Campus and loads more dotted about in the Library it was always difficult to find a free computer. So in 1992 I bought a Performa 400.

This had a 68030 chip runnng at Mgz (I think). 4Mb of RAM and an 80Mb (yes Mb) hard drive. It also had a floopy drive and took about 40 or so to do a complete back up, once I had added my own stuff. It ran System 7.0.1 and I have updated that to 7.3.5, which is the highest it can go.

It came with several demos including one of the start of the Aladin series.

In 1998 came my Original Bondi Blue Ver A iMac (233mhz). What a difference !! The place I bought it from downloaded the 80Mb from the old computer (2 1/2 hours and loaded it on to the iMac (15 mins). I bought an AsanteTalk box which allowed me to connect the two.

It also came with a modem and so the internet started. On Dial-up at first. Then longer periods as optional phone service came on line. And finally on Broadband (ADSL 500k down/ 256k up).

I had upgraded the processor to 400Mgz, added a 80Gb hard drive and added more Video memory to it's max of 8Mb. However the screen then died on New Years Day 2003.

I currently have a G4 1GHz Mirror Door tower. It has been fitted with 3 extra drives. The salvaged 80 Gb , a 60Gb from an external USB unit that the G4 would not recognise in OS X and a 250Gb split into two partitions.

I would say I can use AppleWorks and Office for Mac and produce acceptable printed and Visual work. I can just about produce something in iMovie having edited my Father-in-Law's analogue video tapes through DV converter.

That has led my to iChat - and we all know about that.

Ralph

How to Get iChat to Open AIM weblinks (Chatrooms)

Hi All,

Ruth Lachman posted this answer on the Apple IChat 3 Discussions: Link to Thread

Just in case any of you were wondering, you open up Internet Explorer. Then you go to preferences and choose Network, then Protocol Helper. Then it'll give you a list of helpers, one being AIM. The helper will be AIM by default. Just hit the change button and select iChat as the helper.

Ralph

PostgresSQL

On the Apple iChat Discussion Pages.
Kevin Woon reported this:

You don't actually need to kill PostgreSQL to be able to run iChat. I did some experimenting and found that if you reduce the number of shared-buffers. I had started with 300, but reduced it to 75. After I did that everything worked fine.

And Kaan Erdener replied with:

Ok, I managed to get my iSight working again with iChat while leaving postgres running. Here's what I did.

Before I get started, I'm running postgres 8.0.1 on OS X 10.4.1. My postgresql.conf shows these default values for max_connections and shared_buffers:

max_connections = 40
shared_buffers = 200 # min 16, at least max_connections*2, 8KB each

So, I'm not sure where you saw a value of 300. Was it somewhere else besides postgresql.conf? Or are you running a different version of Postgres? Something else?

I tried descreasing shared_buffers to 80 (the smallest value allowed following the math rule of max_connections*2), but iChat still failed on video chats. This was logged to console output:

2005-07-17 06:37:13.894 iChat[8259] WARNING: Freeze-frame failed: couldn't get local buffer for layer Local!

When I decreased both max_connections and shared_buffers, as below, I found that I am now able to leave postgres running and use iChat with iSight for video chats:

max_connections = 20
shared_buffers = 40 # min 16, at least max_connections*2, 8KB each

Kaan

This might help other with the Postgres problem.

Ralph

Sorting Tiger and iChat

Hi All,

This post is designed to help isolate problems.

Problems from Updating from Panther.

There are or were serveral Add-ons and applications avaiblable to Panther users of iChat that are not compatible with iChat 3.

These following need to be deleted.

iCAR - An Add-on that posts an Auto response Away message (produces a 1 fps result in a Video chat)

Virex for Panther - An Anti Viru app avialable to @mac account users (Produces the 1 fsp problem)

Similar with Apple Remote Desktop if active in the System Preferences > Sharing pane


iChatUSBCam for Panther/iChat2.x - A Add-on utility for using iSight or USB cam with iChat2.x (Incompatible with Tiger/iChat 3)

iProfile - An Add-on for producing a profile on the AIM server thta ichat 2.x caould not do (not proven to be a problem but now not needed).

Use Spotlight to find all files including .plist and delete.



Lotus Note 6 has recently got a mention

A clean install of Tiger (not Archive and Install) produces the best results.

Check Settings

Don't be complacent that you have not set anything different.


There are several new things in Tiger that may trip you up.

These are worth looking at:

Mac Firewall Now includes the ability to Block all UDP traffic in the Advanced button (System Preferences > Sharing >Firewall tab).

Also can now open UDP protocol for ports where as the Panther one only did TCP (Check any old Panther settings you Added to the presets).

The ports should be:

TCP -5190

UDP -5060, 5190, 5678, 16384-16403


There are more ports for Bonjour and Jabber)

QuickTime This has a change in the name of the Connection Speed tab to Streaming (System Preferences > QuickTime) Check this is set to higher or equal to your connection speed.

Date & Time Not conclusively involved but worth eliminating. Set a Network Server and the correct Time Zone.

Next test the actual speed you are getting form your ISP.

http://www.dslreports.com/stest


There is a table here of the speeds you need:

Requirements		1-to-1 Audio Conference	10-Person Audio Conference	1-to-1 Video Conference	4-Person Video Conference
To Initiate (Host)	System Required	Any G3, G4 or G5 processor	1GHz G4, dual 800 MHz G4 or any G5	600MHz G3, any G4 or any G5	Dual 1GHz G4, any G5
	Bandwidth Required	56Kbps Internet connection (up/down)	128Kbps Internet connection (up/down)	100Kbps Internet connection (up/down)	384Kbps Internet connection (up/down)
To Participate	System Required	Any G3, G4 or G5 processor	Any G3, G4 or G5 processor	600MHz G3, any G4 or any G5	1GHz G4, dual 800 MHz G4 or any G5
	Bandwidth Required	56Kbps Internet connection (up/down)	56Kbps Internet connection (up/down)	100Kbps Internet connection (up/down)	100Kbps Internet connection (up/down)

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301050

The one you get linked to in the Help menu is wrong.

Test with a known "good" Buddy:

Ralph Johns (UK), "FAQ: Want to Test your iSight WIth Another Person?", 10:18am Dec 14, 2004 CDT from this list or the four Auto Respoding AIM name accounts

tryichatav Not on line as often a it was.


appleu3test01, appleu3test02 or appleu3test03 New AIM name accounts.

D-Link router owners could try rebooting their router as this has worked in a number of cases.

After that if you are still having error messages post them in the discussions.

List all the steps above you have done and checked off.

State which problem message you are getting.

Insufficient Bandwidth


(Your name) did not respond when you started the chat.

NO Data was recieved for 10 secs

State which ISP you are using.

State your Geographical Location.

State your Computer's processor speed.

Ralph

10.4.2 is Out

Hi,

For those popping by, 10.4.2 update is out and includes an iChat fix for the "Insufficient Bandwidth" issue.

Ralph

Help From EZ Jim

"Hello EDITED OUT

Welcome to Apple Discussions.

if anyone has any advice please help thanks

To give you the best help, we need some info about the systems and connections involved. Post back and give as much as possible of the information requested in the the When do I Post a New iChat Topic ? FAQ, starting about half way down the page.

By my count, the list requests 19 items of information. You should give the info for EACH system involved. (You may even find the problem in the process of gathering that info.)

In addition, let us know that your OS X Maintenance is up to date, whether you have EVER had a successful video chat on your system, and what (if anything) has changed since then. We will be happy to try to provide more specific responses based on your additional info.

---

However, if you want to try some things on your own first, here are some ideas.

First, be certain you can meet Apple's stated System Requirements for iChat AV 3

If you need more help than iChat > Help > iChat Help on your Mac gives you, check out the iChat AV Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).

Although these FAQs were written for iChat AV 2.1, the process is VERY similar in iChat AV 3, but some features and menu commands have changed slightly. The FAQs may not be updated for iChat AV 3 for a while because we are still learning so much.

Start with What do I need to start in iChat ? FAQ.

If you use a router, try enabling its UP-n-P feature. If that does not help, see the How can I get my router to work with iChat? FAQ for further help with configuration.

For additional router info, also see Ralph Johns' GREAT iChat web pages. The sections on Router Set Up and the menu and sub-menu items titled "Setting Up Your Router" and "Eliminating Problem areas" will give you a lot of useful info. (You may want to bookmark Ralph's entire site as a primary iChat AV reference.)

You might also want to review Ralph Johns' current Trouble Shooting thread and Apple's Tiger Support page.

If you are having other problems with your Mac after your Tiger install, Apple's Troubleshooting Mac OS X installation from CD or DVD article may give you some ideas.

Of course, if you have specific questions after reviewing the FAQs and trying these suggestions, we will be happy to try to give more specific answers here based on your additional information.

Alternatively, you might want to look at some of the existing threads or post your own iChat AV questions in iChat AV 3 -Included with Tiger Discussions ".

What I can not say on the Apple Discussions

Hi,


Rant time.

Many of the discussions of the Apple iChat 3 Discussion Area are just whinges by people who can not get iChat 3 to work.

There are some identifed problems listed in Trouble Shooting at the top of this discussion Area.

But it does seem that many are unwilling to take steps to resolve many of thes issues themselves.

"I know Tiger is different by it can't be my set up as it worked in Panter"
This forgets all the trouble some had with DNS server information being needed around 10.3.7 IT also ignors the fact that an upgrade from Panther does not pull this infromation across. It also ignors that the Tiger Firewall is different and now can control ports on the UDP protocol which Tiger did not.
The list does go on a bit when you add the Panther Add-ons and applications that eed to be checked but you get the picture.

The real thing is is that I have set myself personal rules about the answers I give.

In this post I can state that if you buy a car it should work.

Having said that it is helpful if it has the gear selection method you want/need, that you know what fuel it takes and that you can buy that locally and that the steering wheel is on the right side for the country you are in.

Come on Guys chunk it up (take one experience and apply it to other situations) and think.

Ralph

iChat 3 Problems

Hi All,

"Not enough Bandwidth" error messages.

Steps to possible solution (this will not work for everyone).
Previous Panther users are the most likely effected by the solutions here.

Delete the iCAR add-on as it is not compatible with iChat 3
Delete the Panther version of Virex if you downloaded it from Apple as part of a @mac.com account. This is not compatible with Tiger.

Both the above will also produce the 1fps problem as well.

Check the System Preference Settings for all the following:
Quicktime Streaming speed - set greater or at least equal to your Uplink speed.
Network - Add DNS servers.
Date & Time - sync with Network server and Time Zone.
Sharing > Firewall - Check the Advanced button and make sure UDP ports are NOT Blocked
Sharing > Firewall - If on check the ports are open to UDP as well as the Panther TCP settings. (Old Panther settings will be there but will effectively block UDP ports if not changed).

Next check with a known good iChat account - either those from the FAQ list or the AIM account names tryichatav, appleu3test02 or appleu3test03. These last three accounts provide an Auto reponse for testing.

AT this point some of you will still have problems.
You need to talk to your ISPs and have them check the connection you have. In particular you may need to hint at checking Packet Header loss

If you have no luck then post in the Apple iChat 3 Discussion Area with details of the steps taken, the ISP and your Geographical location. Join other threads to keep the info in one place.

Ralph

iChat AV 3

Hi,

Well I have at last updated to Tiger.

iChat 3 is out and running.

Things that are obvious.

Buddy list is now tabbed for the groups that you have if Show Groups is selelcted in the View menu

The Preferences has a better to understand interface.

Not only does your Mac have to be fast enough to host the controller of multiple person Video chats but your Uplink speed has to be sufficient as well

Page is for iChat 3 to follow.

Should include some pictures.

Ralph

New email link

Hi,

I plan to add and Email link butin the mean time.

Use this ralphjohns@lineone.net


Ralph

Interesting email

Hi All,

I have received this email which points out the differences between Port Forwarding and NAT

Hello Ralph

You have kindly responded to my post about lack of repeatability when using iChatAV for video chat through NAT. Indeed I see that you are very responsive to many queries and others often refer to your helpful Web site.

Offline, I have a comment on the reference you have in your pages to NAT and port forwarding - saying that effectively they are the same thing. I think that it may not help some people to see it this way.

For most situations when connecting from a private network to the Internet via a NAT device the concern is for outgoing or dynamic NAT. Traffic initiated from the inside (private) network has the source address translated to (usually) the public address of the outside interface of the NAT device. In many cases, the source port is translated as well. This is so that reply traffic carries enough information to allow the destination address to be translated to the correct inside address (and port). Replies will come back to the new port which the NAT device uses to look up from its dynamic tables where it should send the reply packets back to.

So reply traffic is allowed in automatically - provided the dynamic NAT tables have not timed out.

What Apple are trying to do is to have one end originate traffic from their iChat AV so that the other end sees it as reply traffic to its own outgoing packets. It is a trick that depends on the NAT device making certain "consistent" choices in how to do the port mapping. This presumably is what routers compatible with iChatAV do - including the Airport Extreme. The trick depends on their being a third-party mediator site and is similar to STUN - Apple say they would have used STUN if they had known about it at the time.
See for example http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-STUN and http://www.newport-networks.com/whitepapers/fwnatwpes3.html

See http://midcom-p2p.sourceforge.net/ for a related test tool. This is not perfect for iChatAV troubleshooting as it reports "consistent" for my Cisco router and for my son's Vigor router (once he had upgraded the firmware) but we could still not establish a video chat.

Port forwarding, on the other hand, sets up a static mapping for traffic originating from the outside to a particular inside address (and possibly port). It is provided for cases where there is a server such as a Web server on the private network. Its use is suggested by Apple for NAT devices that do not do outgoing (dynamic) NAT in the way needed for its trick to work. It is not the best choice to make from the security point of view because of the fact that it is a static (fixed, permanent) mapping allowing outside traffic to reach the inside irrespective of outgoing traffic.

Our problem comes of course because NAT (static and dynamic) was designed for client-server applications and not peer-to-peer applications such as direct video chat.

Just to clarify again the reason for my post, having obtained an Airport Extreme because it is a device on the list of NAT devices that work (ie do NAT in the way Apple needs) I was able to establish a video chat once but not a second time. I have not yet been able to try again after a long delay (to allow any NAT timers to time out) in case that was causing the problem.

Many regards

I wonder if any would find these distinctions helpful.

Comments welcome.

Ralph

Iteresting email

HI All,

I received this email which questions the info on this site regarding the differences between NAT and Port Forwarding.

Hello Ralph

You have kindly responded to my post about lack of repeatability when using iChatAV for video chat through NAT. Indeed I see that you are very responsive to many queries and others often refer to your helpful Web site.

Offline, I have a comment on the reference you have in your pages to NAT and port forwarding - saying that effectively they are the same thing. I think that it may not help some people to see it this way.

For most situations when connecting from a private network to the Internet via a NAT device the concern is for outgoing or dynamic NAT. Traffic initiated from the inside (private) network has the source address translated to (usually) the public address of the outside interface of the NAT device. In many cases, the source port is translated as well. This is so that reply traffic carries enough information to allow the destination address to be translated to the correct inside address (and port). Replies will come back to the new port which the NAT device uses to look up from its dynamic tables where it should send the reply packets back to.

So reply traffic is allowed in automatically - provided the dynamic NAT tables have not timed out.

What Apple are trying to do is to have one end originate traffic from their iChat AV so that the other end sees it as reply traffic to its own outgoing packets. It is a trick that depends on the NAT device making certain "consistent" choices in how to do the port mapping. This presumably is what routers compatible with iChatAV do - including the Airport Extreme. The trick depends on their being a third-party mediator site and is similar to STUN - Apple say they would have used STUN if they had known about it at the time.
See for example http://www.voip-info.org/wiki-STUN and http://www.newport-networks.com/whitepapers/fwnatwpes3.html

See http://midcom-p2p.sourceforge.net/ for a related test tool. This is not perfect for iChatAV troubleshooting as it reports "consistent" for my Cisco router and for my son's Vigor router (once he had upgraded the firmware) but we could still not establish a video chat.

Port forwarding, on the other hand, sets up a static mapping for traffic originating from the outside to a particular inside address (and possibly port). It is provided for cases where there is a server such as a Web server on the private network. Its use is suggested by Apple for NAT devices that do not do outgoing (dynamic) NAT in the way needed for its trick to work. It is not the best choice to make from the security point of view because of the fact that it is a static (fixed, permanent) mapping allowing outside traffic to reach the inside irrespective of outgoing traffic.

Our problem comes of course because NAT (static and dynamic) was designed for client-server applications and not peer-to-peer applications such as direct video chat.

Just to clarify again the reason for my post, having obtained an Airport Extreme because it is a device on the list of NAT devices that work (ie do NAT in the way Apple needs) I was able to establish a video chat once but not a second time. I have not yet been able to try again after a long delay (to allow any NAT timers to time out) in case that was causing the problem.

Many regards

I am not sure that this would be helpful to many of the people visiting this site.

Comments welcome

Ralph

Checking the AIM Server is online

Hi All

As you know you can access the Server Options Button in Accounts section of the iChat Preferences when you are not logged into AIM

The default server is called login.oscar.aol.com and the port is 5190.

Some people have found success with port 443

There is another server you can use:
login.glogin.messaging.aol.com
This would be worth trying.

If you still can not log on it will be worth checking with the Network Utility (Applications/Utilities) whether you can see the server.

Open Network Utility
Use the Ping tab
Enter either of the server names
Set the number of pings to 10.
Click the Ping button on the right.

This should confirm that the Server is answering. (or Not)

Also use the Port Scan tab
Enter either of the server Names
Limit the scan to start port 5190 and end port 5190

This should indicate if the port can be seen by you and is available. (or not)

You can take it the server is offline if you do not get a respose with these tests.

Ralph

New Blog Page Set up.

Hi All,

As you may have noticed this page now matches my other pages more closely.

Ralph

New Error message

Hi All,

Cooky94 on the Apple IChat Discussions had this error message

"NSImageCasheExcetion Cannot Cashe Image"

It is solved by checking for corrupted Buddy icons in com.apple.ichat.pictures which is in
Users/(your Account/Library/Caches.

Ralph

Port numbers for Triggering and Forwarding

Hi All,

Check this page for links to the router/modem you have:
http://www.portforward.com/routers.htm
Click on the name of the device and then the method of opening ports on the next page.

Use Port Triggering if you have several computers.
Use either if you have only one.

For Triggering you need to set up this table.
Trigger port 5678 to trigger ports 5678, 5060, 16384-16403
Trigger port 5190 to trigger port 5190

IF you have other Macs add these three entries.
Trigger port 5297 to trigger port 5297
Trigger Port 5298 to trigger port 5298
Trigger port 5353 to trigger port 5353

If this device needs to set protocols in the set up table all need UDP.

Ports 5190 and 5298 need TCP as well (might be a "Both" setting).

In Port Forwarding they need to as follows
Port 5190 to forward to port 5190 (UDP and TCP)
Port 5060 to forward to port 5060 (UDP)
port 5678 to forward to port 5678 (UDP)
Same for the three Rendezvous ports 5297(UDP), 5298 (UDP and TCP) and 5353 (UDP)
Ports 16384-16403 to forward to ports 16384-16403 (UDP)
This last group of 20 ports may be able to be entered in a group as shown but on some routers/modems need to be entered indvidually.
They also need to point to the IP address of your Computer

Ralph

Start of Blog

Hi,

This is the start my Blog. At the moment it is mostly for test purposes. I have not really thought about what will go in here.

Most likely it will be new stuff I find out about iChat.

For those that do not know iChat is an Apple application on Macs that allow Video chatting.

More information can be found from the Index Page

Ralph

The complete set of ports are as follows:
5060, 5190, 5297, 5298, 5353, 5678, 16384-16403

Ralph

Drop down

Drop down
Originally uploaded by Ralph Johns.

Picture of just the Drop Down with entries for iChat

Drop down2

Drop down2
Originally uploaded by Ralph Johns.

Mac Firewall settings with drop down showing.

For iChat.