Windows Live Messenger Video Calls: which ports does it use?

Hello all,

I'd like to use Windows Live Messenger (WLM) to make video calls to my family daily. Unfortunately, video calls by themselves don't work, and making voice calls + inviting to view webcam on both sides works for a random amount of time (from a few seconds to a few minutes) before both webcam images freeze, voice stops being heard on both sides and eventually WLM reports the call has dropped. Retrying does not work anymore.

My girlfriend uses WLM to call her family and it works just fine. We tried calling my family from her computer and calling her family from my computer. Both have problems. So I'm not sure what is going on here.

I realize this is a hard problem to tackle, but I think I'd like to try the following first of all: forwarding all the proper ports from my modem to my laptop, and instructing my family to do the same. Does someone know which ports WLM uses to make video calls?

Thanks in advance!

 

Normally you wouldn't need port forwarding...

Strange indeed..

(I've had webcam trouble in ICQ with KIS - but that was either there or not (KIS off))

 

I'm guessing you and your fam. are in two different Countries....

Nevertheless I encountered a similar issue before. In my case I was trying to start/share my Webcam (not video call) with my gf using WLM but the connection would not connect. I was at work at the time and decided to check our Firebox Firewall for any ports that might be blocked and apparently the Firewall was blocking the Video ports that messenger was using to share my Webcam connection. After setting a rule to forward those ports being blocked the Webcam worked fine.

Now I don't remember what the ports were; I believe I had set a range like 80000 - 90000 or something as it seemed like random ports between those numbers. I cannot verify at this time either as i'm on vaca. from work til mid October.

* After doing a little research it seems that these are the ports that messenger uses. So you can try forwarding the range of ports for both Audio/Video in your case. So forwarding ports 5000 - 65535 on both Routers should do the trick. Good Luck!

 

Yes, that is the case...

Great find! Thanks a lot. I'll try this soon and let you know

 

Is uPnP turned on? I've always found it to help tremendously with this sort of thing.

 

^^^ Yea that might definitely help as well. Enabling UPnP on the Router and checking that the UPnP service is started on the computers as well.

 

In the router UPnP is enabled. How do I check that it is enabled on my laptop?

Thanks for the tips

 

Windows Logo Key + R Or Start--> Run and type services.msc and hit enter. Look for UPnP in the list and set it to Manual or Automatic and make sure the service is started.