Sorry for the less than normal detail....I am constrained to using a public Windows computer behind a major firewall with significant lockdowns on user permissions to correspond for now. The last time that I was home I set my wife's computer to a manual LAN IP address and opened the ports in my router to allow iChat AV to port forward properly.....as I am now VERY far away, I can't give you the specific ports that I opened, however, to test the result I successfully initiated a video chat from outside my LAN by going to the neighbor's house and using their LAN to access the internet.
Normal text chat is / has been / and remains fully functional in iChat.
When initiating a video chat in iChat, there is a period where you have your local video onscreen and the message window that says what part of the process is currently in work.....the message that the other end is available comes up, then when you initiate the video chat it says that it is connecting, then everything freezes in my video window and the message comes up that the other end failed to respond. This happens regardless of which end intitiates the video chat.
Once I get back to a place where I can connect my own computer to the wide area network, I will try the suggestion to change the default port to port 443 and see if it helps.....I think I had tried that a coupla months ago without success, but I've slept since so can't be certain.
If, as Tacit explains, there is a direct connection without intermediate server for the video connection in iChat, then I will never be able to use it from any of my distance sites as they are ALL behind strong firewalls.
Any alternative options for video chat? What are folks experiences with Google Chat or Skype?
Enquiring minds want to know.
