Zen Internet Support Forum

Hi,

 hope someone can help here.

I am trying to set up iChat and Back to my mac in two home offices and the central office.

I have zen internet for all three links, and speedtouch routers 585v6, with time capsules at all three places.

It just isn't working. I'm just testing with ichat at the moment, and it keeps coming up with a connection error. 

The time capsules are obviously compatible with ichat etc, but it's making my routers transparent ie just acting as a modem.

And then setting everything up with the right settings.....!?!

Is any one using ichat successfully?

We want a solution that we can roll out, so we need to be able to replicate it.

If anyone knows of a router / DSL modem that we can buy and it works straight out of the box, then that would be ideal.

It worked when I connected my iMac directly to the speedtouch, and assigned the public IP to my iMac. ichat and screen sharing no problem to my office. But impractical, as I can only do this to one computer.

In fact, the link to the office seems fine. It's when I put the time capsule to the router in my home office, then assign the public IP to the time capsule. ichat doesn't work, and I then can't edit the time capsule's settings.

Does anyone know of an out of the box solution that works for them?

Gwyn 

Well,

I phoned zen internet, and they said that the speedtouch was fine, and all you have to do to it is....... and then talked at me for about 15 mins on what to do (I love techies... "all you have to do is...")

I did it, (port forwarding) but it still didn't work. I told him I thought it would work fine putting it into bridge mode, but I couldn't do this.

Zen also told me that I was the first person to ring them regarding iChat not working. Well, I must be very unlucky..... 

So I got in touch with speedtouch support (which is almost non existent, email only, no downloads) who told me the same. I told them I tried port forwarding already, didn't work, so they told me to assign the public IP to the time capsule.

That didn't work either (My time capsule for some reason disappeared - some kind of IP clash or something??)

So, I managed to find a firmware update to my router (speedtouch support wouldn't give me it) on some random German site, and after 6 (SIX!) attempts, it installed (I had to boot my Mac into PC mode...). I've never seen something install bit by bit, bombing out every time, but a little bit further on the way...

This update gave me an option to configure my speedtouch in 'Bridge mode'. I then configured my Time Capsule to connect to the internet via PPPoE, and....

It all works!!! woohoo!!!

Unfortunately, the other two speedtouch routers don't have the bridge option despite having exactly the same firmware version.

I figured that instead of messing about anymore, I should go out and find an ADSL bridge modem.

Not very popular, I suppose obviously, but I eventually found a TP-LINK TD-8840 ADSL router that went into bridge mode for £20.

replaced my speedtouch and ....

Works wonderfully.

So, if anyone wants to use iChat for video conferencing and screen sharing, I can definitely say, get zen, TP-LINK TD-8840 and put it into bridge mode, and stick this into your Time Capsule / Airport Extreme and set it up in PPPoE mode.

I can now offer this to our clients, which will save on travel and allow me to spend more time with my family.

I hope someone finds this useful.

I only posted this for therapy.

Gwyn 

As I know, one tool called amsn, can work as msn under Mac, free and easy.