FaceTime: Getting Around The Dreaded Firewall
July 13, 2010
While still only a (very cool) conversation piece for most iPhone 4 users, Apple hopes that FaceTime will become a regular part of a user's daily life. With this in mind, the company has released the following support document for users to get around the frightful corporate or school firewall:
If the Wi-Fi network router that you are connected to uses a firewall or security software to restrict Internet access, contact the network administrator and reference this technical article. 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). The Wi-Fi network administrator can refer to their router, firewall, or security software documentation for information on configuring port forwarding.This is good advice for any IT professional, especially those in education with a new school year approaching. For those employees, I'd suggest you get yourself an iPhone 4 if you haven't already done so. Better yet, make it part of your IT budget! FaceTime allows the use of the iPhone 4’s front facing camera for face-to-face chatting using an iChat-like interface. While currently only available using Wi-Fi, the feature is expected to grow in popularly as more iPhone 4's are purchased, as well as when the service runs on AT&T's 3G network. In addition, since it will eventually operate on Apple's newly created open standards, other smart phone users will get in on the fun (and work) as well.
