{"id":38,"date":"2012-01-03T22:30:38","date_gmt":"2012-01-03T21:30:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eggblog.invertedegg.com\/?p=38"},"modified":"2012-01-03T22:30:38","modified_gmt":"2012-01-03T21:30:38","slug":"fixing-facebook-chat-messaging-on-the-ipad-ios-by-opening-port-8883-on-the-firewall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/eggblog.invertedegg.com\/?p=38","title":{"rendered":"Fixing Facebook Chat (Messaging) on the iPad (iOS) by Opening port 8883 on the Firewall"},"content":{"rendered":"

My darling wife got a new iPad2 for the holidays. \u00c2\u00a0Worked fine while we were out of the house … but as soon as we got home, the Facebook Chat (messaging) feature stopped working, and hung with a permanent “connecting”. \u00c2\u00a0In case you’re not following, “chat” is what shows up in the right-hand column when you use Facebook for the iPad (latest version as of December 2011) in landscape mode (and only shows up in landscape mode). \u00c2\u00a0To restate the problem (and help indexing <g>): \u00c2\u00a0Facebook Chat (aka Facebook Messaging) on the iPad (right-most pane in landscape mode) hung with a “Connecting …” message due to firewall port blocking.<\/p>\n

When I connected outside my firewall (directly to my DSL connection) it worked; it didn’t work from behind my firewall. \u00c2\u00a0So … clearly a ports issue … but what ports?<\/p>\n

Drove myself crazy trying to figure this out. \u00c2\u00a0Nothing I could find by Googling. \u00c2\u00a0Closest I could come was that Facebook Chat might be using XMPP (TCP ports 5222 and 5223), which makes sense … but opening those ports did nothing to solve the problem.<\/p>\n

Eventually, I turned off the firewall (yikes) and turned on WireShark and ran the app. \u00c2\u00a0Doing so, I saw a very strange pattern — connections to Facebook servers on port 8883, which is, technically, the “secure MQTT” port. \u00c2\u00a0Long story short, I enabled TCP port 8883, and Facebook Chat suddenly started working.<\/p>\n

Some additional notes:<\/p>\n