These iChat 4 pages are coloured Gray and have the iChat 4 icon on them that was in use at the time, so you know where you are. The icon differs little from the Version 3 version.

These pages have sat here since 2008 with no update. In that time the AIM servers have been closed down (2017) and iChat has been superseded by Message and FaceTime. That effectively make this a sort of Historical Document of how it worked.

---

iChat 4 Pictures Firewall

You are In:- iChat >> Versions >> iChat 4 >> iChat 4 Pictures Index >> iChat 4 Firewall Index >> Stealth in Advanced

3[3]

03 Stealth In Advanced.

Nov 2008

3 Advanced Button Slide pop out

A  Change. This part of the firewall has only minor changes. What was a UDP Port Blocking option has gone.

There is a Stealth Mode feature. DO NOT Enable this. It stops the Computer reponding to Pings. Some routers and routing modems also do this and it needs to be turnred Off for iChat. The same applies here even if you send Pings over the LAN you have.

Pings are used by some testing applications or Utilities that check if your computer can see another. They can be abused by sending lots. However iChat sends a Ping as part of the Process to create the connection and having the Stealth Mode enabled will Block your computer from accepting this single Ping.

This is effectively the last picture in the iChat 4 set.

Created with JAlbum 4.0.6

---

Created October, 2008 Major Update/Edit October 2024.

 ©  Ralph Johns. Created October 2008

Information Block

This site is about iChat from Version 1 through to iChat 5.x.x
Mostly this is kept as an Historical Document. Some small tense changes have been made but the content is by and large untouched.

It has a mixture of basic info and problem solving help.

The sections below will change for Specifics about info on the page on view

About This Page

The Ports had to be manually added/entered in the Mac Firewall in Tiger (10.4.x) including Jabber, Bonjour, the Text Chatting port and the A/V ports.

In Lion (10.5.x) the Firewall has been changed to Allow things by entering the App by name with no other involvement.

However in The Advance Section is this item called Stealth, which is what the main picture is about here. This stops Pings amongst other things. Pings are a simple method of checking the IP address of another computer is correct. Utilities such as the Mac Network Utility in Applications > Utilities can send them as well as the other things it can do.

The normal amount is 10 pings and you see a time, normally in millisecs of the response. What becomes the issue here is that some apps also use Pings as part of a Handshake process. The issue for Stopping these sort of enquiries to your computer is the fact they can be used in Internet Attacks by sending so many Pings requests that a device cannot answer tham fast enough.

Compatibility

As mentioned above this has had a major Edit/Update in September/October 2024 moving towards being fully HTML 5 compliant meaning that the Browsers listed below are likely to no longer work.

I have tested in Safari 18.1, Firefox 130.x and 131.0, Vivaldi 6.9.3447.48 and iCab 6.2.3 (All Mac Browsers) I don't have access to a PC let alone multiple browsers to test on.

The original pages worked with Win/IE 5.5 and later (should work in 5.0, but not confirmed), Firefox 2, Safari 3, Opera 9, iCab 3.02 and later, Mac/IE 5, Netscape 6 and later

Old browsers (IE version 4 or earlier, Netscape 4 or earlier) should/may only see a text-based page which, while not the prettiest option, is still entirely usable.

Top of page