Audio works, Video doesn't - Firewall?

I have successfully setup and used Live Messenger for both audio and video
calls. However, when I attempt to communicate with a colleague overseas,
audio works but video doesn't (it attempts to connect and then fails). His PC
is behind a non-UPnP firewall, and the UDP ports in the range 5004-65535
haven't been opened (and we'd rather not have to), so to be honest I'm
surprised it works at all. But since audio does work, why not video? Any
suggestions would be much appreciated. Many thanks.

Greetings Phil,

If you're unable to establish a direct connection with either audio or video a relay server
is used. These relays are heavily used and sometimes are too busy to handle all the
connections (the audio is separate from the video). That's just one explanation anyway.

You may want to give another product a try like Skype which has a different peer to peer
model.

--
Jonathan Kay
Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
Associate Expert
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2006 Jonathan Kay.
You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.
--

"Phil" <> wrote in message
news:2B8044B9-2668-47E4-9F59-...
>I have successfully setup and used Live Messenger for both audio and video
> calls. However, when I attempt to communicate with a colleague overseas,
> audio works but video doesn't (it attempts to connect and then fails). His PC
> is behind a non-UPnP firewall, and the UDP ports in the range 5004-65535
> haven't been opened (and we'd rather not have to), so to be honest I'm
> surprised it works at all. But since audio does work, why not video? Any
> suggestions would be much appreciated. Many thanks.
>

Thanks, Jonathan, for your reply and suggestion. Is there any way in which I
would tell if a relay is being used? My other thought is that the firewall
has an ALG that handles the audio but not the video - is that a possibility?
I have tried Skype, but also without success - although I believe that I
would only need to request that the outgoing ports be opened, which is rather
less of a security risk!

"Jonathan Kay [MVP]" wrote:

> Greetings Phil,
>
> If you're unable to establish a direct connection with either audio or video a relay server
> is used. These relays are heavily used and sometimes are too busy to handle all the
> connections (the audio is separate from the video). That's just one explanation anyway.
>
> You may want to give another product a try like Skype which has a different peer to peer
> model.
>
> --
> Jonathan Kay
> Microsoft MVP - Windows Live Messenger/MSN Messenger/Windows Messenger
> Associate Expert
> http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/expertzone/
> Messenger Resources - http://messenger.jonathankay.com
> All posts unless otherwise specified are (c) 2006 Jonathan Kay.
> You *must* contact me for redistribution rights.