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Worldwide Skype outage - updated

By | August 16, 2007, 9:42am PDT

Summary: I’ve been unable to access Skype all day and it turns out it’s not just me. User from around the world are reporting the service is down and impacting personal and business communications for potentially millions of people. There’s not a lot of information available at this time. Here’s what Skype posted on their blog earlier today…

Update 2: Friday morning and Skype is down again. Fellow ZDNet blogger George Ou thinks there may be a DDOS attack in play based on a recent, publicly released exploit but Skype’s official announcement refutes that. I had service most of the evening yesterday with intermittent outages but I’m not able to infer a lot from that.

Update: Service appears to be restored as 5:25 pm MDT.

I’ve been unable to access Skype all day and it turns out it’s not just me. User from around the world are reporting the service is down and impacting personal and business communications for potentially millions of people. There’s not a lot of information available at this time. Here’s what Skype posted on their blog earlier today:

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.

As of this writing – 10:40 am MDT (GMT -7), service is still not restored. Here’s hoping whatever te cause is gets discovered and dealt with quickly. Skype has had performance stutters from time to time but this is the first global outage I can recall since I first began using the service and it’s bound to undermine the confidence many people have had in their availability and viability as a replacement for a conventional land line.

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Topics

Skype Technologies S.A., Outage, Marc Orchant

Disclosure

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Orchant/?page_id=433

Biography

Marc Orchant passed away in 2007. He was an independent consultant who worked with a number of companies in the software industry.

Talkback Most Recent of 21 Talkback(s)

  • Well, obviously Marc...
    ... it must be a scalability problem cause by all of the new users generated by your recommendations.

    IOW, it's your fault. Such is the price of fame. :^)
    ZDNet Gravatar
    dave.leigh@...
    16th Aug 2007
  • Wow! Who knew?
    I had no idea I wielded such enormous power. wink
    ZDNet Gravatar
    morchant
    16th Aug 2007
  • America Offline?
    I do remember one day back in the '90s when AOL was having servere problems with their network and we got to see how many people were relying in it for business e-mail (large numbers of them were dead in the water).

    There are great dangers in everyone relying on the same vendor for anything mission critical and it's silly not to have a backup.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    John L. Ries
    16th Aug 2007
  • A Good Example of Why Technology is A Tool
    Skype is great and very useful. But this problem underscores a potential problem with too much reliance on technology - particularly when a lot of it is out of the user's control.

    This, in conjunction with the server outage in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, is a good reminder that users need redundancy if they are going to rely on web-based applications.

    The internet and internet apps are fairly young and prone to a number of things in different parts of the world that are beyond the end user's control (weather, power outages, etc.). Same kind of thing with web-based apps - if you lose your internet connection, you lose the ability to produce. There are any number of places where things can go wrong (user's power goes out, ISP loses power/servers, DOS attacks across the web backbone, etc.)

    While they are great resources and often work without a hitch, it's just not good business sense to rely on them as your sole means of communicating or producing work product. Nor good sense for anyone. If your only phone is Skype and Skype goes out, let's hope you don't have an emergency.

    It would be interesting to see a comparison of the infancy of the net vs. the infancy of the phone system. Similar hurdles for both: cover a large area, offer service to a large/diverse group of people, ensuring the service works in a variety of conditions, etc.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    DaffyDuck
    16th Aug 2007
  • Good comment - one nit
    Skype makes it very clear that because they do not provide access to emergency services you should not use the service as your only phone solution. Otherwise your points are well stated - thanks.

    Personally I've been getting by just fine with my cell phones today but I sure do hope they get things sorted out soon. It's bnow about 2:00 pm MDT and they're still down.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    morchant
    16th Aug 2007
  • Agreed
    This is one of the reasons I'm really skeptical about web applications. Too many things beyond your control.

    "If your only phone is Skype and Skype goes out, let's hope you don't have an emergency."

    It gets worse: Skype doesn't offer 911 service. Something I think the feds should've pushed harder to require for VoIP.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    CobraA1
    16th Aug 2007
  • Your wish came true
    The FCC required that all telephony REPLACEMENT services (such as Vonage, Broadvoice, VoiceWing) be required to offer and support E-911 by Feb of 2006 (i believe, not sure of the date.) But at any rate, Skype plainly states on their website they are NOT a telephony replacement service and you cannot make emergancy calls on there. Now I may be an advanced user but I can certainly hope that most people would be made aware of that fact.
    Skype is a tool to keep people connected -- such as IM, VoIP, video conferencing, chat, and any other internet based tool. Consumers need to be aware of what they are getting into (both free and fee based services), damn there's that personal responsibility popping back up , AGAIN!! happy
    ZDNet Gravatar
    JT82
    17th Aug 2007
  • IMHO any VoIP system that connects to a land line should be eligible
    IMHO any VoIP system that connects to a land line should be eligible, not just "replacement" services.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    CobraA1
    19th Aug 2007
  • A voice of reason...
    I wish more people looked at different pieces of technology as tools. Seems like it rises to the status of religion way too much. One piece of software is a binary incarnation of God while another is the root# of evil.

    As for a comparison of the infancy of the net vs. the infancy of the phone system, that's not really a fair comparison. The phone system infrastruction was bought and paid for by the American taxpayer. The internet is trying to get there on the cheap, leveraging the existing infrastructure already bought and paid for. It's my belief that we're going to eventually need an entirely new infrastructure, and the taxpayer will again foot the bill. Business just won't pony up the amount of money it's going to take.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    jasonp@...
    16th Aug 2007
  • infrastructure...
    not infrastruction. Looked good though.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    jasonp@...
    16th Aug 2007
  • Closed system
    It also underscores why closed protocol, single vendor solutions are not the greatest either.

    If you were using a vendor neutral protocol, like SIP or IAX, you would at LEAST still be able to make outbound calls, as it's trivial to use multiple providers. If you have multiple inbound numbers at multiple providers, then you would still be reachable too. It would help to toss the ancient phone number system and use direct VoIP addressing rather than a phone number (SIP:biff.jones@example.com or some such thing.)

    The problem is exactly what you say - the technology in general is young. It just doesn't have the redundancies designed into it that are really needed, yet is still tied to legacy systems.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    waltmaine
    16th Aug 2007
  • That's what a cell phone is for
    That's what a cell phone is for these days. I also keep an analog land line at home too if I really need to call 911 fast.

    This actually does look like an on-going DoS attack.
    http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=683
    ZDNet Gravatar
    georgeou
    17th Aug 2007
  • Mine has been down...
    ...for about 4 hours now. We use it a lot where I work for inter-office calling (we have offices on each side of the US). So now we just have to use the regular phone, except it cost a LOT more (skype is free).
    ZDNet Gravatar
    Stuka
    16th Aug 2007
  • What are you talking about? It's still down for me.
    What are you talking about? It's still down for me! I can't get it to go green.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    georgeou
    16th Aug 2007
  • Still Down Here Too
    And it's almost 1AM.
    ZDNet Gravatar
    itanalyst
    16th Aug 2007
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