This is weird, I left for work this morning with AIM working on my iMac (running Adium)... I come back home and I'm kicked offline, which is fine, because I signed onto it at work.
I try to sign back on but can't. I thought I might not have disconnected my work computer, not that that would cause a problem. So I try another account of mine. Still can't connect. I try iChat. Still can't connect!?
I fire up my PC, and try to connect using Pidgin. No connection! Pidgin says "could not connect to authentication server: unknown error." I try every combination of screenname on both iChat and Adium on the Mac, and Pidgin on the PC, and none of them worked.
And then, I tried AIM express, and it worked! It also worked with google chat, so that makes me feel as though it's not on AOL's server side. When I connect via a browser, I can see about 16 of my buddies still online, including someone just a mile and a half away.
What the hell is going on? Browser based works fine, but the actual programs don't work. I didn't do anything to my network while I was gone, and if it was a firewall problem why would it be blocked on two different machines?
My router is a motorola WR850G using the stock ip configuration.
EDIT: I just restarted the router and cable modem and it's back on track. I hate that that trick still works, and I still don't know why it would cut me off to begin with with just AIM, or the port AIM uses, but drives me nuts.
