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How are you connecting to the Internet? It may be any number of things, but the type of connection for iChat and Skype is somewhat different to that for, say, web browsing in that both rely on a continual stream of data being maintained throughout the session.
One thing you might try would be to open up Terminal and try 'pinging' the iChat login server continually while you use iChat to see if the connection is steady or not.
The command you'd run in Terminal, on the command line, would be:
ping login.oscar.aol.com
... and you should see output like this:
powerbook:~ sb$ ping login.oscar.aol.com
PING login.glogin.messaging.aol.com (64.12.200.89): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=0 ttl=47 time=112.225 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=1 ttl=47 time=110.327 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=2 ttl=47 time=114.129 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=3 ttl=47 time=110.851 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=4 ttl=47 time=107.968 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=5 ttl=47 time=110.614 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=6 ttl=47 time=108.485 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=7 ttl=47 time=109.324 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=8 ttl=47 time=114.755 ms
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=9 ttl=47 time=108.416 ms
... etc
Keep an eye on the icmp_seq= part - if it skips numbers then that indicates 'packet loss'. Excessive packet loss might be enough to disconnect your iChat session.
To stop the 'ping', hold down the 'ctrl' key and press C. You'll then get a summary of the stats for the pinging that'll look something like this:
...
64 bytes from 64.12.200.89: icmp_seq=10 ttl=47 time=109.907 ms
^C
--- login.glogin.messaging.aol.com ping statistics ---
11 packets transmitted, 11 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 107.968/110.636/114.755/2.148 ms
If you do see packet loss, then you should probably note the time of day and contact your ISP and ask them if there was a problem with their network at that time.
Other possible causes might be that your ISP is filtering connections with some kind of proxy server and the proxy might be overloaded or badly configured.
I doubt it's something Mac-specific (assuming you're not trying to do something that heavily loads your machine while chatting, like running an intensive PhotoShop filter or trying to burn a DVD at the same time).
Hope this gives you at least somewhere to start your investigation.
Regards
--
simon
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