iChat Problems
It's been a quiet day - got word on a bug fix I'll incorporate tomorrow, fixed a few issues with some data, but it's been a nice and quiet day. So I spent a little time trying to see if I could get iChat to work from my MacBook Pro to my kids' MacBooks. I know that they can video chat to one another, but when I tried to chat with each one I got the 'Error -8' problem that seems to be pretty common to a lot of folks.
If I had to guess it's in the ports, but it's possible that it's the NAT on the Netgear wireless router. I'm going to have to do some tests when I'm at home to see if I can chat them when I'm on the same network, and if that works, can I chat them when I'm on the primary network in the house. This will test the Netgear router as the kids' machines are on the 'downlink' side of the router, and the internal network is on the 'uplink' side. If that fails, then I know it's in the Netgear router and I need to deal with that. If not, then it could be the router at work, or blocked ports.
What's really amazing to me is that Apple hasn't put this out in a FAQ or something to address this directly. It's almost like a simple software update would say "Hey, I can't Video chat because I can't connect to port x on the other machine." Then you'd have some URL to go to and see what the problem was. This would be incredibly simple, but they haven't done it. I suppose it's not a high priority as for most people is just works, but when there's a problem, it's always better to give an error message with as much information as possible.
So I'm hoping it's something with the Netgear setup. The Apple web site mentioned turning off UPnP on some routers, but there wasn't a lot of real detailed information other than the port numbers that needed to be open. Since none of the machines has the firewall turned on, I think it's got to be in the router at home - or here at work. If it's here at work there might be a chance I can get the ports opened, but we'll have to see. I might not be able to. In any case, this is a puzzler that didn't need to be as puzzling. Apple just needs to have better error messages.
UPDATE: turns out it was the available bandwidth at work. There are 200 users on the one 1.5Mbps DSL line and that's not leaving any real bandwidth for the iChat AV connection. Problem solved, but oh how I wish they'd have real bandwidth for these lines - that, or a really fast WiFi in the Chicago area so that I could use that and not have to hassle with this either.