iChat audio/video chat and file transfer behind NAT
Update 2006-03-10: It seems that the testing servers for natcheck at MIT have been shut down, so natcheck does not work any more. I have added a few more links to the post.
Pretty much all chat applications inherently have trouble stting up a direct connection when both participants are behind a NAT router. Such a direct connection is needed for audio/video chat and file transfer. iChat is one of the apps having notorious problems…
When the router providing NAT has “consistent port translation”, everything should be fine. However, especially some Netgear wireless routers seem to have trouble with this feature.
10 comments March 4th, 2006