![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
EDIT - Fixed! See below
Aug. 15th, 2009 09:18 pmSometimes an application comes along and changes things so completely that you don't know how you got along without it. For me, one of these was ICQ. I got in early (my ID is a mere 7 digits) and stuck with the simpler versions of the program even after it got swallowed by AOL and started bloating to the "feature"-ridden monster it is today.
When I was part of an online club, I used it a lot to keep in touch with other members. These days, however, I just have one old friend that I chat with often. We used to be able to send files to each other, but about a year ago, something between us on the network broke/changed and we could no longer establish a direct connection. I tried other IM client programs (Trillian, etc), with the same result. As a workaround, we switched to a personal FTP server. But as of a couple of days ago, that stopped working too. And we can't figure out why.
I understand the very basics of networking, of ports and proxies and firewalls and so on, but not much more; I don't know how to go about diagnosing the issue, at which end it is, and how to fix it. My friend is even less tech-savvy, and trying to talk them through mostly blind trial and error from a whole other state is not working. So I'm posting this in the hope that someone out there with the knowledge and the diagnostic tools will get in touch with me and help me fix this, or tell me where to find someone who might.
EDIT: Problem solved - and I'm still not sure what it was! But finally cutting the strings to the old, minimal version of the ICQ client and updating to 6.5 (and then promptly getting rid of the banner and half the cruft :p ) makes file transfers work again. So thanks for all the suggestions for other workarounds, but I guess we just had to move from the beginning of the 00s to the end. :/
When I was part of an online club, I used it a lot to keep in touch with other members. These days, however, I just have one old friend that I chat with often. We used to be able to send files to each other, but about a year ago, something between us on the network broke/changed and we could no longer establish a direct connection. I tried other IM client programs (Trillian, etc), with the same result. As a workaround, we switched to a personal FTP server. But as of a couple of days ago, that stopped working too. And we can't figure out why.
I understand the very basics of networking, of ports and proxies and firewalls and so on, but not much more; I don't know how to go about diagnosing the issue, at which end it is, and how to fix it. My friend is even less tech-savvy, and trying to talk them through mostly blind trial and error from a whole other state is not working. So I'm posting this in the hope that someone out there with the knowledge and the diagnostic tools will get in touch with me and help me fix this, or tell me where to find someone who might.
EDIT: Problem solved - and I'm still not sure what it was! But finally cutting the strings to the old, minimal version of the ICQ client and updating to 6.5 (and then promptly getting rid of the banner and half the cruft :p ) makes file transfers work again. So thanks for all the suggestions for other workarounds, but I guess we just had to move from the beginning of the 00s to the end. :/
