When anything goes wrong Lord Button is brought out of retirement - Tony Benn
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Corporate firewalls block the Iphone 4
MAKER OF SHINY TOYS, Apple's hope that its Iphone 4 will make a breakthrough into corporate networks has been dashed, as it turns out the phone has a few problems with firewalls.
You would think that the design geniuses at Apple would have tested the Iphone to ensure that its WiFi video conferencing software would work inside a corporate network before releasing it to the great unwashed.
However, according to Apple support, apparently your network manager will have to configure the network so that it can accommodate Steve Jobs' settings.
On a "Normal" WiFi network Facetime video calling will "just work", the Apple support site said. However there's a problem when you are on a WiFi network that is behind a firewall. Apparently this is an incredibly rare thing to Apple. After all, in Jobs' universe you just plug yourself into the world wide web and pray that Steve Jobs will protect you.
But apparently educational institutes and corporates trust not in the holy aura of Saint Steve of Jobs to protect them and instead rely on some technology called firewalls. As a result they are accursed by the fact that the Iphone requires special configuration.
"Network administrators typically open a minimal set of network ports, allowing the traffic for approved applications to enter and leave the network while blocking other network traffic," warn the Apple Geniuses.
"To use FaceTime on a restricted Wi-Fi network, port forwarding must be enabled for ports 53, 80, 443, 4080, 5223, and 16393-16472 (UDP)," they said.
Not difficult, although it will be interesting to see how many network managers will think that opening ports on the corporate firewalls to an outfit that is the English football team of security is a good idea. µ
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"It doesn't sound like something worth opening up ports on a business firewall for. I can't imagine anyone asking IT to open them just to look at someones ugly mug when yacking."
I certainly can. The smart-looking marketing director of a small company, for example, will most probably feel an imperious urge to have nothing in the way of his Jobsian connection device, so that he may impress all of his friends/acquaintances/future customers with it.
As well as the son of the boss in other medium-size companies, who just wants his favorite-toy-of-the-moment to work unimpeded by such mundane considerations as security and usefullness.
No, I can think of quite a few people who'd not hesitate one second to override any security-conscious director on this matter.
How would Apple test this? They use Macs remember? Macs can't be infected by a virus so they don't need firewalls, ergo, no firewall testing ability.
I originally wanted to leave a post on the Register and was moderated for the first time in nearly 8 years for a very harmless, if mean-spirited, comment about good ole Jobs. I guess the Inquirer is my new home for tech news unless I get a similar treatment.
I doubt many people were using the face thingy anyways. It doesn't sound like something worth opening up ports on a business firewall for. I can't imagine anyone asking IT to open them just to look at someones ugly mug when yacking. I'm guessing both ends need to have the iphone thingy to work??
Forwarding of the ports is not tolerated and is not always possible - forwarding is for one internal IP only. For this purpose is recoommended UPnP or the way, used from Skype - hacks and http connections, not directly opened/forwarded ports. Need to say that not only corporate networks are firewalled but nearly all home WiFi routers have firewalls set by default.
Great Apple mistake! Hire some Skype people and stop makig old-style software...
What's wrong with all the other stereotyped insults?
That's a lot of ports for a single app...
Does Facetime really need 81 extra ports to operate?
Ports 53, 80, 443 are going to be open for outbound on most networks anyway.
it would take to see a comment about the English football team loss from yesterday if I understand. I watched the game and feel your pain.
I fifa is so opposed to technology place a human at each net that stays at that position to watch for goals,that might have the biggest blunder I have seen in my 58 years of watching sports.