My computer operating system is Debian 11
Jami is also on my phone running Android version 12.
From time to time Jami has been slow to update text messages. In addition, Jami would display a red banner on my phone saying it had no network access from time to time specifically when I would wake up the screen.
For seven hours now messages do not get to the person I am messaging and I do not receive that person’s messages. When I message on my Debian machine the message does not show up on my phone and vice versa.
I have updated both the Debian machine and my phone and completed restarts from a complete shutdown and messages do not come through on either device from myself or the person I message.
The person I am messaging has checked for an update on Playstore and there wasn’t one available. That person has completed two restarts since the problem started. I also tried shutting off my firewall just in case it was a problem.
If it is of any significance, I cannot clear our conversation. The menu option does not exist.
Help would be appreciated. Thanks in advance.
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I think I have a solution. However, I would like input from others as I am not all knowing.
I use Tmobile for both my phone and my home internet. I looked online and it would seem that using any peer to peer service over Tmobile is difficult. The reason is that Tmobile uses CGNAT. An explanation much better than I can give is located here in layperson’s terms:
Or, you can go to the Wikipedia article and have your eyes roll back in your head.
In effect I don’t have a public IP address. I am part of a gigantic LAN. What would be a local IP address for me is an IPV4 address with a port number, as I understand it.
What stymied me this whole time is that I couldn’t figure out what changed to make Jami messaging stop working suddenly. There had to be a change.
After reading about torrenting and other peer to peer software not working on Tmobile and about CGNAT I went to what is my ip address. Lo and behold, in the past my location had been in one major city and it had changed to another. This would indicate to me that Jami might be looking for me at one place and now I am not there.
Evidently the cure is to use a VPN service to overcome this. There is a learning curve here and I am very much on the steep upside of it.
Here is the Reddit on the subject of peer to peer problems with CGNAT
https://www.reddit.com/r/unRAID/comments/10vx69b/ultimate_noob_guide_how_to_bypass_cgnat_using/
I hope this helps someone.
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Not related to NAT type… Swarm (includes 1 to 1 swarm) of Jami requires TCP, and most of NATs don’t allow incoming TCP, so usually it fallback to relay candidates (use a TURN server). You probably encounter a bug.
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I looked in my advanced settings and UPnP is on. Use TURN is on. Are there any other suggestions or is this simply not going to work for me?
I couldn’t stop fiddling with this. I can ring the other user over the internet to make an audio call but I still cannot message. They cannot find me either.
I created a new account on my Debian box and I am now able to message my old account on my phone and my friend I could not message before on their phone. Strange.
UPDATE: My old account that remained on my phone couldn’t discover my friend I message with. I then created a new account on my phone. It discovered my friend and I can message them without problem.
I am simply going to create new accounts on each device with names that are variations of the first. (usernamedebian, usernameandroid, usernamelenovo).
This is not a fix. It is a workaround that allows me to not make Jami the center of all my endeavors.
Be Good To Yourselves
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