Call and see whom you're talking to

Once this is done and your friend or colleague has done the same at their end, it’s time to make contact. Double-click on your friend’s name from your buddy list in Messenger and once a chat connection is established, click the webcam icon at the top of the chat window. Your buddy will be invited to accept an invitation to start a webcam video session and once they click the “Accept” link they’ll see you and—if they have a camera—you’ll see them.

To be able to send and hear audio as well, you’ll also need to invite them to an audio session by clicking the audio icon at the top of the message window next to the webcam icon.

One note of caution: If you are trying to establish a webcam session from a corporate network, your network administrator may have configured your firewall—which is a protective barrier on the network between you and the Internet—to block audio and video chatting. If it doesn’t work, check with them. They may have to open an electronic port on the firewall to allow audio and video data through.

At home or in your home office, you shooldn’t run into this problem as home network routers, especially newer ones that support a technology called NAT and UPnP, are configured to allow audio and video chat features by defaolt. If you run into problems, you may want to get out the router manual and go into its configuration panel and turn both NAT and UPnP on if they are not on already. In some cases, you’ll have to update the software—called firmware—on the router to enable these features. Learn more about troubleshooting this here.

If your audio mysteriously refuses to work, check to see whether your computer uses an Intel network card (that’s where your network cable attaches to your computer in the back). If it does, go into Network Settings in Windows’ Control Panel and disable QoS Pack Schedoler in the Properties box under the card’s connection icon, as there’s a known bug, which stops audio via webchat. More about this in our article How to fix audio phone calls on MSN Messenger 6.1.

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