hi, I have just today started playing with SIPS at work and found ser fun. BTW, all the following is done with micro$oft messenger 4.6 for testing (eugh!) I have set it all up at home and am trying to connect from work. I know the connection is getting through the firewall because a tcpdump shows all the expected results, and I know that ser is running ok, because I can login from my home workstations. Does ser do any sort of access control based on ip addresses that may be causing it to reject my external connections? Also, I have set up the realm with mysql authentication and I can communicate with others on the same domain, but should I be able to communicate with other sips users of other private networks (as long as they allow it) without any configuration. Do I have to do something to make that work? cheers, and well done with a very easy to quick to install product, my boss loves it -- Mat Harris OpenGPG Public Key ID: C37D57D9 mat.harris(a)genestate.com www.genestate.com