custom iChat ports

asinclair · #1 January 28th, 2007, 11:50 AM

My girlfriend and I each have a mac in our home LAN.

I would like to enable iChat to work seamlessly on both our computers.

Obviously, however, NAT port mapping can only redirect certain ports to one computer at a time.
Is there a way to set iChat to use different non-default ports on one of the computers so that we may both use iChat?

While I am at it, I also would like to know where the port for Apple Remote Desktop is defined, so that I can also set it to a non-default value. I often remote to home from work, and having port 5900 open (default port for vnc) strikes me as not overly secure. I would like to change it to something else.

Thanks for any advice.

bobw · #2 January 29th, 2007, 09:20 AM

I doubt you can change the ports for iChat as it uses AOL servers.

ARD uses UDP port #3283

khehr · #3 January 29th, 2007, 09:35 AM

Under the preferneces of iChat there is a server settings tab, and you can chage the port there. Might help, I know it helps getting around firewalls at work, I mean........ Have you tried both chatting? I have changed nothing on my set up at home and both my wife and I can be chatting at the same time, in fact during our fantasy football draft we had 3 chatting on different machines at the same time.

**Giaguara** · #4 January 30th, 2007, 04:33 AM

You can still both chat even when you don't change the ports. I assume you are using different accounts so there should not be problems using different accounts in same subnet on same time.
A living proof would be the house here... usually 6 people logged in, and the poor router does all the dirty work. Also the issues that have been ever on with AV parts of chat can have usually been limited to the other side of chat (so whomever anyone was chatting with).

Satcomer · #5 January 30th, 2007, 11:00 PM

If you want to do networking on/to OS X then check out Apple's Using iChat AV with a firewall or NAT router and "Well Known" TCP and UDP Ports Used By Apple Software Products.

asinclair · #6 January 30th, 2007, 11:23 PM

Thanks for all your replies.

I guess I just have to hope that the router will be able to figure things out.

Honestly, my girlfriend has not yet expressed any interest in iChat, and she is not in the least an IM user of any protocol. She used to have AIM on her PC, which she'd set up at her dad's request, and the first thing she would do whenever she used her pc was close down the application.

I am hoping to 'convert' her into iChat, as it would be a nice way to stay in touch during my travels. I will try to test our setup with a simultaneous AV call with my family, and will post a follow-up here, just to let you guys know how it went.