Tag - Skype
A couple of days I wrote about a major Skype outage that caused severe downtime across the whole Skype network. Today the Skype team explained the cause at their blog:
There are claims that the team are blaming Microsoft patch day for the downtime, but I see no evidence of this.
>> View the post at the official Skype blog
On Thursday, 16th August 2007, the Skype peer-to-peer network became unstable and suffered a critical disruption. The disruption was initiated by a massive restart of our user’s computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine software update.
The abnormally high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.
Normally Skype's peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days.
The issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype. We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed or that our users' security was not, at any point, at risk.
This disruption was unprecedented in terms of its impact and scope. We would like to point out that very few technologies or communications networks today are guaranteed to operate without interruptions.
We are very proud that over the four years of its operation, Skype has provided a technically resilient communications tool to millions of people worldwide. Skype has now identified and already introduced a number of improvements to its software to ensure that our users will not be similarly affected in the unlikely possibility of this combination of events recurring.
The Skype community of users has been incredibly supportive and we are very grateful for all their good wishes.
The abnormally high number of restarts affected Skype's network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.
Normally Skype's peer-to-peer network has an inbuilt ability to self-heal, however, this event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly. Regrettably, as a result of this disruption, Skype was unavailable to the majority of its users for approximately two days.
The issue has now been identified explicitly within Skype. We can confirm categorically that no malicious activities were attributed or that our users' security was not, at any point, at risk.
This disruption was unprecedented in terms of its impact and scope. We would like to point out that very few technologies or communications networks today are guaranteed to operate without interruptions.
We are very proud that over the four years of its operation, Skype has provided a technically resilient communications tool to millions of people worldwide. Skype has now identified and already introduced a number of improvements to its software to ensure that our users will not be similarly affected in the unlikely possibility of this combination of events recurring.
The Skype community of users has been incredibly supportive and we are very grateful for all their good wishes.
There are claims that the team are blaming Microsoft patch day for the downtime, but I see no evidence of this.
>> View the post at the official Skype blog
We all experience downtime on our IM clients and we all find it frustrating. Why? Because instant messaging is important to us, we need it to chat to friends, talk to a client or find out something important quickly. Recently the ultimate in business instant messaging, Skype has been hit bad the past couple of days with sign in troubles.
It all started on the 16th August when logging into Skype was giving users difficulties. Joosep from the official Skype blog said:
The team have been working around the clock fixing the issue, which they say will be explained in detail on Monday. In two days nine blog posts were made by the team about the issue, you can hardly say they were slacking and well done to them for working so hard.
Two days of problems with Skype will not go down with customers, many of whom use Skype as an essential part of their business. The downtime does not appear to be a result of an attack or a problem with the data centre, but a software issue. Let's wait and see what the team have to say about the issue on Monday.
>> View the list of downtime posts in the development blog's August archives
>> Source: TechCrunch
It all started on the 16th August when logging into Skype was giving users difficulties. Joosep from the official Skype blog said:
Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it's a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible.
Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible.
The team have been working around the clock fixing the issue, which they say will be explained in detail on Monday. In two days nine blog posts were made by the team about the issue, you can hardly say they were slacking and well done to them for working so hard.
Two days of problems with Skype will not go down with customers, many of whom use Skype as an essential part of their business. The downtime does not appear to be a result of an attack or a problem with the data centre, but a software issue. Let's wait and see what the team have to say about the issue on Monday.
>> View the list of downtime posts in the development blog's August archives
>> Source: TechCrunch