FaceTime issues behind a firewall

[jmmo20]

Hi,
So my partner and I have been having this issue with facetime. It's a recurrent issue since more than 8 months ago so it doesn't have anything to do with the recent outages of facetime.

Basically, he's now abroad and his home broadband is behind a closed-down router. All ports are closed and there's no way to change the settings. As a consequence everything that needs ports open doesnt work.

Therefore when we make facetime calls I assume everything is going through apple's servers, rather than a point to point connection. We have two issues.

1) The quality is appalling. Really slow video and poor image quality.
2) Anytime he makes a facetime call, and I accept it, the call just hangs in "connecting..." until it times out and disconnects. If I have FT set up in two devices, accepting the call in one device keeps the other device ringing, so it looks like the server fails to connect the call.


Any ideas how we can mitigate or solve these issues?
opening up the remote router is not an option unfortunately.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Assuming you're correct about the required ports being blocked on the network, your partner may have to try to VPN out of there...but that may effectively blocked, also.

Worth a shot, though. He can give a couple of VPN services a tryout. I use iVPN.net but I can't say if that or any others are going to work in that situation.

 

[jmmo20]

Assuming you're correct about the required ports being blocked on the network, your partner may have to try to VPN out of there...but that may effectively blocked, also.

Worth a shot, though. He can give a couple of VPN services a tryout. I use iVPN.net but I can't say if that or any others are going to work in that situation.

hi, I actually set up a vpn connection to our mini server at home. we'll try FB over vpn but I have a feeling it might be too slow :=)

 

[BrianBaughn]

hi, I actually set up a vpn connection to our mini server at home. we'll try FB over vpn but I have a feeling it might be too slow :=)

Your home network's upload speed would most likely be the limiting factor...as well as wifi quality if you're on that at home. My speed's pretty good and video works well through a VPN. An ethernet connection in my case.

 

[jmmo20]

Your home network's upload speed would most likely be the limiting factor...as well as wifi quality if you're on that at home. My speed's pretty good and video works well through a VPN. An ethernet connection in my case.

absolutely.. my upload speed is barely 1mbps I think.

 

[BrianBaughn]

absolutely.. my upload speed is barely 1mbps I think.

That's the official minimum requirement but I'd think you'd need a consistent connection above that for it to work well. Did you try with the VPN you already have set up?