Skype Is Back, Finally
You never know how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone.
Two days people all over the world were unable to logon to Skype, Friends all over the world confirmed they were experiencing similar problems, The Skype blog published the following notification,
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 apologise for the inconvenience.
A note at 20:06 GMT: We’d like to thank everyone who has taken the time to send us their thoughts, concerns and good wishes. It means the world to those working so hard to resolve this thing.
Not much information and there are a lot of comments from people who depend on Skype for business use.
The problem was an inconvenience for me but for a lot of Skype users it was a serious problem
O Skype,
How and Why did you let it happen?
We use Skype and Skype-out for doing business here in Vietnam, and the damage and loss are uncountable….
Shall it be a lesson for us to rely solely on you for communication?
A vague explanation of the cause was given
Apologies for the delay, but we can now update you on the Skype sign-on issue. As we continue to work hard at resolving the problem, we wanted to dispel some of the concerns that you may have. The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user’s own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network.
Rest assured that everyone at Skype is working around the clock — from Tallinn to Luxembourg to San Jose — to resume normal service as quickly as possible.
Today Skype resumes normal service.
Take a deep breath. Skype is back to normal.
On Monday, we’ll provide a more detailed explanation of what happened. Until then, we’d like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order. We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in. Thank you for the amazing patience, trust and support!
Lets Keep Perspective
This event has made some people reconsider depending on Skype
and others are crowing I told you so.
lets not forget that traditional telephony providers also have problems on a regular basis
Mobile-phone outage hits N.Y. borough
Phone Outage Hits Hospitals, 911 Centers
Not to mention the failure of other important systems we depend on
Blackouts cause N America chaos
And what about the big BlackBerry outage a couple of months ago ?
Systems fail, The World Moves On
Every complex system fails eventually, No one promises 100% up time, thats why the 5 nines standard is used as even the most reliable systems only promise 99.999% up time.
In Skypes case the failure was massive and lasted at least 24hrs, but it is the first time I remember Skype failing in the several years I’ve been using it, On the other hand my land-line supplied by a tradition telecoms provider fails on a regular basis.
So lets keep things in perspective, Skype went down for 24hrs and is now back up And based on past performance it’s not likely to fail again for several years.
Good analysis Eoin.
I think Skype should have been able to react faster. Being down for two days in this day and age is pretty bad. If it was a bug in their client software then roll out an update (perhaps even on a phased basis). People have come to except universal service with the Internet and all the services that run on top of it.
Comment by Sean — August 18, 2007 @ 4:05 pm
I totally see where you’re coming from BUT in over 20 years of working in offices where BT supplied landlines, I’ve never experienced 2 full business days of telecomms being down. Skype did not keep their customers informed of what was going on and this is what their downfall will be. We use Skype for Business and PAY for it. People have been griping that it’s a free service so we shouldn’t complain but we pay for a service and expect it to work. The 2 FULL business days that Skype was out meant staff having to use personal mobiles to call customers in Europe and further afield instead of being able to use SkypeOut and there will be huge bills to pay. We do have landline phones in meeting rooms but obviously these can only be used by one person at a time. We’re going back to good old fashioned BT after this shambles. Oh and there’s always iBeam…
Comment by Mel Rao — August 22, 2007 @ 8:28 am
In the 35040 hours since I been using Skype,its been down for 30 hours
that’s a 99.914% up time.
I doubt that traditional land lines telephony system have a higher up time when you add up all the failures.
Comment by Eoin Prout — August 22, 2007 @ 9:41 am