mac-to-pc chats

[Tres Finocchiaro]

Kevin,

Is there a chance you have connectivity issues that are only surfacing with
UDP traffic?  If you are dropping packets on your network, it is likely it
could go unnoticed with TCP -- since TCP will resend --, however when
trying to use a UDP service, it would be very evident.

I had an issue plague me with streaming video that was causes by a bad
network cable, and then again with a failing router.  It wasn't until I
introduced a UDP service that I noticed issues.

-Tres
On Jun 24, 2013 3:28 PM, "Kevin Justie" <kjustie at webrary.org> wrote:

> Answer to your questions are below, but some additional interesting
> results from today's teasting:
>
> --  Changing all  three users to be local admins on their machines
> (previously only one was) had no effect on those situations where one user
> could not initiate chats with another.  This was done Friday, and even
> though local admins were turned back off Friday, all three PCs are now
> (Monday) able to initiate chats with each other (previously, the laptop
> could not initiate with the desktops).  Gone through multiple restarts of
> the PCs and it still works; no idea what happened between Friday and this
> morning that made it work.  Macs are still unable to initiate with
> desktops, however.
>
> --  Turning the Windows firewall off did not help with the Mac issue.
>
> --  I ignored this the one time it happened last week, thinking that I
> just mis-remembered the sequence of events leading up to it so it wasn't
> actually an accurate test of a Mac-initiated chat, but now it's happened
> twice today, too:  I've been able to initiate a chat -- once, and only once
> -- with each of the desktops from a 10.8 Mac -- one of the scenarios that
> was not working last week.  It works once, but then I'm unable to make it
> work again, despite trying after logouts, restarts, Pidgin/iChat restarts,
> or any other conceivable sequence of events.  The times it worked were
> outside of any other external changes (local admin, firewall, etc.), but it
> definitely happened.
>
> --  I am occasionally seeing messages on the PCs about user names
> changing:  when user A has a chat window sitting open with user B, after
> several minutes of inactivity user A gets a message that user B is "now
> know as…"   Can't say this has always been the case, but on the ones I've
> noticed today the name is changing from the user's first name to their
> first and last name:  "Blanche at admin-1 is now known as Blanche Miyamoto @
> admin1."  This didn't appear to have any impact on whether either PC could
> chat with the other (it was working both ways by the time I noticed the
> names changing), but….
>
> --   …I saw something similar to this name changing on the Mac side, and
>  there it did affect ability to initiate a chat.  On two occasions earlier
> this morning -- and again, I'm unable to duplicate it now, but I monitored
> it closely enough the second time to know it happened -- when I first
> opened Pidgin on one of the desktops while logged in as a (real) local
> admin (i.e. not the regular user set to local admin), it showed up as
> "administrator" in iChat on my Mac -- and I *was* able to initiate a chat
> from my Mac; this particular scenario had never worked previously.  But if
> I closed and re-opened Pidgin, the name on the Mac changed to "admin
> person" and I was then *unable* to initiate from my Mac -- an no matter
> what I tried, the name never changed back to "administrator," and I was
> again unable to initiate a chat from the Mac.
>
> --  On my Mac, when I try to initiate a chat with one of the desktop
> users, I get the message "The instant messaging connection failed. The
> other person's computer may be unreachable," as soon as I type the first
> character of the message;  it then appears again after I have finished the
> message and press Return to send.  This is despite the fact that the user
> is in my buddy list with an "available" status, and that the status changes
> when I change it on the PC, and that if I quit Pidgin, iChat tells me the
> user is "now offline" (in the message window, where the "…connection
> failed…" messages appear, not in my buddy list).  Similarly, Pidgin
> accurately and immediately reflects changes in my iChat status on my Mac.
>  So, there's definitely a "live" connection between Mac and desktop, at
> some level.  But it does seem peculiar that it somehow knows, as soon as I
> start typing, that there's a problem; I don't understand that.
>
> --  Not sure if I've mentioned this before or not, but I am unable to
> initiate chats from Mac to desktops regardless of whether the desktops are
> logged into a regular AD user account, or to the local admin account.
>
> I mention all of these only in the hopes that one may be an obvious signal
> of the root cause of the one remaining problem, initiating chats from Mac
> to Pidgin on the two desktops.
>
> kevin
>
>
> On Jun 23, 2013, at 12:17 AM, David Balažic <david.balazic at comtrade.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Have you tried to turn off the firewall on the desktop PCs that are
> having problems?
> > Or even on the laptop?
>
> no change
>
> > What firewall are you using? Note that some 3rd party firewalls block
> some network traffic even when "turned off".
>
> If you mean on the PCs, just the regular Windows firewall.  On the network
> it's Forefront TMG, but again, all PCs are inside the firewall, so that
> shouldn't be an issue.
>
>
> > It might also help to know which ports are used by each PC.
> > the netstat command gives that information.
>
> I assume the ports are the numbers displayed after the IPs in netstat?
>  They change (PC and Mac) each time Pidgin is started, so nothing could be
> done to open firewall for them (and turning firewall off didn't help
> anyway).
>
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