Fergie's Tech Blog

Skype Users Don't Buy Outage Explanation

Robert McMillan writes on InfoWorld:

eBay's explanation for last week's failure of its Skype communication service has left many users still wondering what caused the worst outage in Skype's five-year history.

Millions of Skype users were knocked offline last week when a programming bug made it impossible for most Skype users to connect during a 36-hour period, starting last Thursday.

On Monday, Skype said the disruption was kicked off when a large number of Skype users restarted their computers after installing Microsoft's monthly security software updates, which were pushed out to Windows users starting on Tuesday.

Skype's peer-to-peer network was "not properly tuned to cope with the load and core size changes that occurred," after a large number of users restarted their machines and the Skype network was flooded with new login requests, said Skype spokeswoman Jennifer Caukin. "This disruption was unprecedented in terms of its impact and scope."

posted by Fergie @ 8/20/2007 04:10:00 PM