HI,
This is the Messages Accounts pane in the Preferences but look identical to iChat 5 and 6 at this point.
It's greyed out as it is logged in
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The List on the left may look diiferent but the right hand pane with the Server name ands port will look the same.
Messages and iChat 6 use the same API server to login into but is serves the same fucntion as login.oscar.aol.com if you are using iChat 5.
In iChat 6 Apple moved iChat to use the API server and the port was moved to port 443
Postings going back some while in this iChat forums have long been suggesting changing to this Port.
The Table above comes from this info
You can only change the Login port in iChat
You cannot change the File Sharing port
You cannot change the port that the visible part of A/V invites are sent on
You cannot change the port(s) the actual Video or Audio Only takes place on.
Originally the AIM side of iChat use port 5190 to do both the Login and the File Sharing stuff but on the TCP protocol and then the UDP Protocol.
Setting up Port Forwarding in some routers saw this as Forwarding a port twice (Something not allowed in Port Forwarding) and would stop File Sharing in iChat
In same cases as with Zyxel routers this would, for some reason, effect the A/V side of things.
Hence the Login Port change.
In Leopard, Snow Leopard, Lion, Mountain Lion you tell the firewall to allow an App and the System takes care of telling the firewall which ports are being used.
So...
If you see a Visible Invite from your Buddy and you Accept and the Camera Light goes on (As in the first Post)
then we will know that port 5678 is open (or you would not see the invite)
After that you may see this
If you open this you wll see a Log of why the chat failed.
It will start something like this
Date/Time: 2006-07-05 21:11:03.403 +0100
OS Version: 10.4.7 (Build 8J135)
Report Version: 4
iChat Connection Log:
AVChat started with ID 485234091.
[Edit Name]: State change from AVChatNoState to AVChatStateWaiting.
0x157a780: State change from AVChatNoState to AVChatStateInvited.
0x157a780: State change from AVChatStateInvited to AVChatStateConnecting.
[Edit Name]: State change from AVChatStateWaiting to AVChatStateConnecting.
[Edit Name]: State change from AVChatStateConnecting to AVChatStateEnded.
Chat ended with error -8
0x157a780: State change from AVChatStateConnecting to AVChatStateEnded.
Chat ended with error -8
The version is likely to be different, the Error code will vary as well.
The error codes can point to whether the issue in in the router or elsewhere.
To say this another way.
There are 65535 ports which an internet Connection is divided into.
A router will have the first 1024 open by default (Web Browsing, Mail etc).
iChat uses some port below 1024 in later versions but mostly ports above this threshold.
If the Mac Firewall Is ON then App need to be listed as Allowed and then there is no problem at the Mac end.
There are different methods of Opening port in a router.
One of these is Port Forwarding.
This allows one port to be pointed to one port on the computer
This is then repeated fro other ports
Basically a port is Opened to one IP (Computer)
Port Forwarding restricts things to opening a port to only one IP (Computer)
If your computer changes IP for any reason then the Port Forwarding (however many ports were set up) are not pointing to the computer.
This may mean that in iChat your Can Login and text chat but have problems doing File Sharing and A/V chats.
Another method is UPnP
This allows multiple Computers to use the same ports (it then does not matter if your computer changes IP) at the same time and the ports are opened by the App telling the router when it needs them (A bit like the Mac firewall)
(This is a really rough and ready description).
It would help to know which OS version and which iChat version you are using as things like the firewall have minor changes to them that are important and so does iChat.
9:52 PM Monday; July 30, 2012
Please, if posting Logs, do not post any Log info after the line "Binary Images for iChat"
iMac 2.5Ghz 5i 2011 (Lion 10.7.2)
G4/1GhzDual MDD (Leopard 10.5.8)
MacBookPro 2Gb (Snow Leopard 10.6.8)
Mac OS X (10.6.8),
"Limit the Logs to the Bits above Binary Images." No, Seriously