Vonage VoIP and iChat AV port conflict; potential solution

Apple's iChat AV and Vonage's Voice over IP solution both use the same network port under Mac OS X -- causing potential conflicts, as detailed by MacFixIt reader Bill Bankson

"I thought the VOiP service was a neat idea but began to notice that each time I engaged an iChat with family the session would last about 30 seconds and the image would freeze and about 30 seconds later the audio would quit. I went through a lot of diagnostics including a Vonage bulletin board and finally discovered the cause was that the Vonage system was using the same port as iChat. When confronted with that fact the Vonage response was to suggest that Apple change their port designation."

One potential solution, as posted by a member of Apple's Discussion Boards, is to use Vonage's alternative set-up, detailed on their Web Site.

Poster rodan writes "When I first got Vonage I did encounter some problems using iChat for video conferencing. The hardware I'm using is a cable modem, AirPort Extreme Basestation, Vonage phone box and my mac. The recommended set up was cable modem > Vonage box > AEBS > computer. This set up had the Vonage box routing all the data. This was the standard set up. After some reading I tried the alternative set up which is: cable modem > AEBS > Vonage box > mac. This way Vonage is not in charge of routing all the data, but rather the AEBS. I was successfully able to video chat. Below the link takes you to this set up. Make sure you follow all the directions to the letter for it to work properly."

Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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