Skype has suffered a major service outage that started from approximately 3am PST Thursday.
Skype advised that their engineering team had determined that the downtime was due to a software issue, with the problem expected to be solved “within 12 to 24 hours.”
The issue was serious enough to cause Skype to temporarily disable all downloads of the Skype client.
Skpe has had a very strong record of uptime previously and this outage is a first in recent memory. In comparison Twitter was down intermittently from 7pm PST Wednesday for around 6 hours, a fairy regular occurrence. Skype remained down at the time of writing as at 7:30am PST.
Seems serious.
I use it for work all day long and I needed it this morning before heading out on vacation. Dang!
Skype is an incredible service, and is bound to have problems from time to time.
I for one have lost no faith in Skype. Free calls for the world! The true leader in high quality free calls, fighting back against the tyranny of the phone companies!
I know I sound like a crazy person, but I am a big fan of Skype. =^)
Tim McCormack
iRent2u.com - The Online Rental Marketplace
I’m not so sure about the current statement, because this morning (BST) they said it was a peer-to-peer networking issue - you can see the time line of the outage on my blog: http://www.sme-blog.com/commen.....g-problems
This once again raises serious issues for the whole SaaS/Web 2.0 mash-up discussion, it had luckily only minor consequences for us (WinWeb.com), but others have had more serious problems, I’m sure. See my post relating to this issue: http://www.sme-blog.com/winweb.....of-mash-up
ST
It is a bit disturbing that a serverless p2p network with no one fail point, can well… fail.
I knew this would be reported here soon. Being overseas at the moment, I’ve found myself dependent on Skype for much of my communication…sucks that it’s down. The uptime has been great previous to this though… and backing up Tim..I’m also a big fan of Skype.. it’s on my small list of “essential” services.
Andrew,
From my understanding Skype is not completely decentralized. It’s not a completely decentralized model like bittorrent without a central server.
I agree Andrew, I love the Skype service - hell we implemented it into our product.
But I am worried that the problem is somewhere else entirely - that would be worrying indeed.
ST
They’ve still got a great track record, probably due to their partial p2p structure
Smart blokes, those founders. Kazaa, Skype, and now Joost.
Yeah, I use it for work, and now we’re using MSN for the day. Ouch.
One note– they didn’t really disable updates, I only saw that message that they had after I had chosen to update from within the program itself, and it downloaded and installed.
All the Corporate Big Boys and Big Girls suffer occasional setbacks, including even NASA in the Scientific Realm. Skype will find the causal source and turn a momentary weakness into a future strength (SWOT in Small Business slang). We use Skype in our Small Rural Tourism Business in Puerto Limon and we have captured several small groups because of the accessibility factor which otherwise is only available in Metro high population centers.
DAVID CARNEGIE
Puerto Limon, Costa Rica
Skype rocks, but much like the RIM outage earlier this year - you are just surprised at the lack of redundancy - odours of LAX.. one NIC, takes down 10 million users.
We rely on skype, so this outage has gotten us out of our groove this morning.
And Duncan, sorry to nitpick, but you should say PDT and not PST since we are in daylight savings time right now. 3:00 AM PST == 2:00 AM PDT
The skype is falling, the skype is falling!
Andy
I’m +8GMT, but if it’s any help though you are officially correct, but most official type documents just say PST, allowing for PDT in that, at least that’s what my last flight manifest from PER to SFO said 
When you say “we” you me you
And wouldn’t 3am PST = 4am PDT, daylight savings is a hour forward after all?
I’m sure this is nothing to worry about. Skype has proven its quality millions of times.
“Fairy regular.” That’s pretty regular.
Spell check is not enough. Use your eyes and re-read what you type aloud before letting it publish.
It was bound to happen one time or another. But Skype is awesome and unless this becomes an ongoing issue I don’t see this affecting their growth/success at all.
Also, why the needless comparison to Twitter at the end? Just wondering.
An unexpected inconvenience.
Obviously the system is not entirely decentralized or this wouldn’t have happened. More likely, the authentication servers are centralized at Skype’s main datacenter, and text message routing is decentralized. I wonder what it would require to decentralize authentication…
It will be interesting to see how long it is offline.
I should have googled skype outage before uninstalling skype from my computer
still down as at 9am PST. Hope it all comes back for everyone soon, I’m off to bed (midnight here).
Skype is superb.
I never had problem with it before. So I thought the problem this time was only with me and because of my internet connection.
Skype is a total kludge to use. I could never explain to my parents how to download, install, and configure it. On top of that, it uses P2P, which sounds technically interesting, but in reality just means the voice quality is crappier and less reliable.
Check out TokBox at http://www.tokbox.com. Video conferencing. No download or install necessary, it just works. All Flash.
> I wonder what it would require to decentralize authentication…
That’s simply not going to happen. I’m sure they have auth being load balanced, but that’s a function that no sane CTO would allow to be handled by clients.
There has to be something pretty severe that has malfunctioned–12-24 hours of continuous outage for a service with nearly such a great track record says to me that this is a nightmare scenario over at ebay.
Duncan I know you don’t like to link out, but I posted about this early this morning. Give a brother some link love as I do for you.
http://www.centernetworks.com/skype-down#new
We use Skype extensively at work to communicate between our remote team members. This is just unacceptable…
I hate to admit this, but we’ve already switched to MSN this morning.
Justin, try TokBox. I heard about it first here on TC just two days ago, and our team is already using it instead of Skype.
I’ve posted about the Enterprise 2.0 aspect of this failure over at ZDNet:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/projectfailures/?p=350
Michael Krigsman
http://projectfailures.com
If the system has gone down it makes sense to stop people downloading the client. Last thing a new user wants is to download a program that doesn’t work.
I was up late coding, it went down before 1am Pacific Time for me.
skype is taking a deep breath!
This really screwed me today as I was supposed to be involved in several calls and I use SkypeIn for all my business!!!
I’m fairly new to Skype, and so far, love it….can someone please provide a short “recommended list” of other similar services? Looking for those you’ve used, opposed to just searching a cold list.
Thanks!
I find it terrible. Fair enough if a little startup goes down because it is free. I’m a paying Skype customer that relies on their service and they cannot perform. I will be looking for a refund and I am thinking about alternate services. Shocking!
There is a Frisian saying: Pikerje net it komt dochs oars.
Meaning: Don’t worry at the end everything is going in another way than you think. But…at the end it will be okay with Skype. In Holland its evenin g now. look for other things to do…
Anyone here knocking Skype should really think twice - this is one of the best services on the web, bar none, and has been for years. One glitch should not turn anyone off (of course sucks to be those that has calls scheduled, but come on, you use it because it’s CHEAP, so bite the bullet).
I was trying to call someone and bammmm no service
I wonder how Skype can be harmed - this application structure, which body made like web, seemed to be unbeatable. My Skype had problems today too. Probably this is not just “Software Issue”.
Where’s Maynard Webb when you need him??
I downloaded the new Mac client yesterday and it was really buggy too.
Still down for me as of 11:00 AM PST.
AS far as I know, Skype works like distributed self-organized peer-to-peer network, P2P. Remember, the creators of Skype also are the authors of Kazaa.
Hackers from all over the world very careful about Skype, due to its ” Black Magic Art” programming style, very advanced and complicated.
There’s some interesting articles on this subject, e.g. “Skype Trojan” by Walter Sprenger, or “Skype Reads Your BIOS and Motherboard Serial Number“.
So I won’t be surprised if this “software problem” will be later recognized as hacker attack to the / through the Skype which was blocked by Skype maintainers on time to prevent the crisis.
I am totally dependent on skype. Use it all day at work for IM. Gonna try out Jangl or Jaja and see if I can get that working for the calls.
@Textbook Case @Darren Stuart
I downloaded Skype less than an hour ago, successfully.
At first the download link didn’t work, but I kept trying (only a few times) and eventually it worked. It seems to be working now as well, but apparently they still haven’t fixed the glitch (I can’t login yet either).
Weirdness of weirdnesses… as I’m typing this, I’m logged right back into Skype… about 11:11 AM MST. Believe it or not! I am logged in right now. -er, was, just a second ago!
People are reporting problems logging into their online brokerage accounts as well. I wonder if this is related to the mortgage/stock craziness.
This is having a major impact in our call center. We have virtual assistants in the Philippines and they primarily communicate with our clients via Skype. Didn’t think I’d ever have to plan for a backup for Skype.
Love Skype! I think it could be a bigger issue than Skype.
Update at 11:45am PST
Was able to log in and download my vmails at least but unable to make or receive calls.
I bought a local line number from skype and was not available to my customer today …
unacceptable.
btw. the caller ID used when I call people is not showing the correct number but another fancy one!!