Video conferencing

[Michael Wiktowy]

On 2/1/07, Frank Pineau <frank at pineaus.com> wrote:
> When I travel on business, I like to set up video chat to talk to my
> family at home.  The problem is, home is behind a NAT firewall (a PIX to
> be exact).  I have limited IP addresses and cannot spare one to
> statically assign to an endpoint inside my network for this purpose.
> Regardless, I'd like to be able to connect to any node in my network,
> depending on who I want to call.  I never know what I'm going to be
> behind, but it's usually also some sort of NAT firewall that I do not
> control.  I've tried ekiga (nee Gnome Meeting), and a few others with
> almost no luck.  I thought something like skype (which doesn't support
> video under linux) or an instant messenger that uses an intermediary
> server (Yahoo, ICQ, etc.) to get around the NAT issues but none of those
> support video either.  I've tried VPN to my PIX, but as I can't control
> where I'm coming from, I haven't been able to configure a reliable VPN
> client for linux.
>
> In short, when trying to video conference under linux, I'm successful
> around 5% of the time.  It's almost always easier to boot into Windows
> and do it from there.  What do you use for mobile video chat and how
> have you set it up?

I can't say that I have done anything with video yet but I was under
the impression that the STUN settings in Ekiga/Gizmo/etc. will help
you out here. Make sure those are enabled and it should allow you to
traverse NAT firewalls without any further intervention on your part.
It works for the audio stream so I am not sure why it wouldn't work
for the video stream also.

Another trick I use something is to set up ssh tunnels for the ports I
need to get through a firewall. That way I only need to have port 22
forwarded through the firewall and I can get any number of ports
through after that. It only works with protocols that have a fixed
number of non-dynamic ports though like VNC.

/Mike