Firewall/ transfer problem in AIM

[KlumpDud]

In Aol Instant Messanger I can send/receive files from some people. But when I tried to send a file to my brother (he is behind a LinkSys router, dunno if that matters or not), it says "connection cannot be made, something about firewall"...I' sure you've all seen that message.

Does anyone happen to know how to get around this? Thanks.

[Nuclear Krusader]

There is an epidemy of these probs.

I remember seeing a thread about this yesterday and a week ago a fellow computer guy was complaining in the M$ training about the inhability of MSM to establish direct connections via cable modem. I think he mentioned he was behind a router too.

Does your brother have the XP "firewall" active?


**Edit: I found the thread.**

Here (http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.php?threadid=57965)

[KlumpDud]

he has win 2000

[Miz]

Your brother will need to open a port on his router to let AOL file transfers through.

The port AIM uses is 5190....according to this site (http://www.chebucto.ns.ca/~rakerman/port-table.html).

All anybody sees from the internet side of your brother's system is his "public" IP...which is the router. All his computers are "behind" the router and have their own, private, internal network IP assigned to them by the router. So when you try to send, your computer's AIM is only able to "see" his router.

Forwarding the port tells the router to send anything coming through that port (to route it) on to the computer indicated by the IP number entered in the "Forwarding" section of the router's setup interface.

If he doesn't know how to forward ports, the Linksys router manual does have information on how to do that...although I didn't find it very helpful but I did finally figure it out, so I know it can be done. ;)