MSN Messenger and internet connectivity issues

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2005 Posts: 3

My wife is trying to set up a Linksys Vonage box in Korea and after much pain and suffering we got the phone part to work just fine.

Two problems remain:

1. MSN Messenger doesn't work reliably. I see her when she logs on and she sees me, but the text messages don't go through. After a bit of time, I see her disconnect, even though she's still signed on. I tried port forwarding (1863 for text messages), but that doesn't seem to work.

2. Web surfing is quirky. For the most part, surfing to read-only sites works fine. She runs into trouble when she has to log in to a particular site, for example Yahoo mail. Then the whole thing slows down to a crawl. Loggin in to the Korean version of Yahoo mail doesn't seem to present any problems though.

Anyway, we played with lots of settings, including MAC Address cloning, port forwarding and QoS, but nothing seems to work. These problems are the same whether or not we're actually talking on the phone, so I figure it's not a bandwidth issue either.

Just for reference, the setup is ADSL. I had her disable the login software provided by the ISP and enable PPPoE on the Linksys Vonage box.

Any ideas would be much appreciated.

Posts: 492 · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:42 pm Post subject:

Without knowing what your setup looks like I can only guess that poor connectivity could be part of your problem. How you should set up your DHCP is something you need to ask your ISP. Also, I have never had success with the MSN Messenger and I'm not surprised to hear that anyone else has difficulty too. May I recommend the Yahoo Messenger, even the AOL Messenger.

I prefer http://www.dslreports.com for my connectivity testing. I find them to be the most accurate by far.

One more thing, if your wife is in Korea, you might care to check this over: http://www.vonage.com/features_terms_service.php

Posts: 482 · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 10:53 pm Post subject:

MSN Messenger tries to open several ports on the router, so you need to make sure UPnP is enabled in the router settings.

Posts: 492 · Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2005 11:09 pm Post subject:

I'm sure your right. However, Microsoft usually isn't very willing to give away port numbers. I would like to know what they are. Do you know what port number to open? TCP or UDP?

Thanks.

Posts: 3198 · Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2005 9:26 am Post subject:

I believe they're TCP 1863 outgoing and 6891 - 6900 (also tcp)

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2005 Posts: 3

I tried opening port 1863 and had no success. I believe the 6000 ports are for voice, so I didn't really try those. I'll try the UPnP setting on the router, seeing as I remember MSN Messenger had a setting support for it.

Unfortunately, that still won't take care of the web browsing slowdowns with Yahoo Mail and such. Any ideas?

The strange thing is that MSN Messenger and Yahoo Mail worked fine before the Linksys router went up, so I figure it must be some difficulty both have with the router. The fact that voice works just fine is also a total mystery!

As an FYI, the setup is:

DSL Modem > Linksys Vonage Box > Computer and Phone

The Linksys is set up for DHCP, so the computer's IP is something like 192.168.15.2.

Posts: 31 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 31

What version of messenger is it?

Posts: 3 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 20, 2005 Posts: 3

I believe that it's 6.2 but I'm not 100% sure. I can check tonight.

Posts: 31 · Vonage Forum Junior Joined: Mar 16, 2005 Posts: 31

This is what i found, hope this helps:

389 : TCP MSN NetMeeting
522 : TCP MSN NetMeeting
1024 : UDP MSN NetMeeting (ports 1024 - 65535)
1503 : TCP MSN NetMeeting Whitebord and Application Sharing
1720 : TCP MSN NetMeeting
1731 : TCP MSN NetMeeting
1838 : TCP MSN Messenger (Gamevoice)
1863 : TCP/UDP MSN Messenger primary (incoming)
3389 : TCP MSN/Microsoft RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) for Remote assistance
5004 : UDP MSN Messenger, ports 5004-65535. Used for AUDIO and VIDEO.
5004 : UDP MSN messenger (dynamically uses a port in this range 5004 – 65535 - requires uPNP in your NAT router and/or firewall). Used for AUDIO and VIDEO.
5190 : UDP MSN Messenger (incoming)
6891 : TCP MSN Messenger Filetransfer (incoming) - ports 6891 - 6900, one port per file transfer
6901 : TCP/UDP MSN Messenger Voice Telephony (incoming)

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Mar 27, 2005 Posts: 1

Looking forward to an answer for this. I had the same problem once I insatlled my router. The conference function stopped working.