Windows Users Caused Skype Outage

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1. Fowl
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 4:26 am

   And there hasn’t been a patch tuesday ever before while skype has existed?

   I call BS..

2. WEB
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 4:26 am

   Couldn’t the server admin customize the default times of the updates or configure the default reboot policy options?

3. BeingParents
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 4:52 am

   It seems the self healing should be implemented by default.
   When planning any software project the worst case should be planned for.

   It is great they fixed the problem.However,it seems that there was a bit of miscommunication between user and Skype.

   I always have a plan B.

4. Brendan Jarvis
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 4:55 am

   I’ve had hundreds of hours of free conversations over Skype since it launched. I’m not going to hold 36 hours of downtime against them. I’m sure they will have learnt a lot from this and I would be surprised if they let it happen again. It’s probably done more good for the service than harm.

5. Otis Gospodnetic
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 5:07 am

   A nice problem to have.

6. Mario Ruiz
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 5:10 am

   Hi Duncan,

   This post is fine but incomplete, because it leads to react as Fawl (your 1st comment). The more complete explanation is that this particular massive restart “event revealed a previously unseen software bug within the network resource allocation algorithm which prevented the self-healing function from working quickly.”

   For me this is consistent with what Skype has been telling. The problem of distribute systems is the time that takes to recover. We can compare with when we buy a URL and takes 24 to 48 hours to propagate.

   The damage is done. I Gizmo capitalize this event for the benefit of all the users. We used to think Skype was a monopoly until last week.

   Mario Ruiz
   @ http://www.oursheet.com

7. Marco Kotrotsos
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 5:19 am

   no.no, you just can’t say that it’s “because of Windows Users” and then state the fact that that it “revealed a previously unseen software bug”

   The bug was there in the first place, Windows users revealed the fact that it (The bug in Skype) existed. It was Skype’s own fault.

8. Owen
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 5:40 am

   Hmm .. Skype’s post does seem to have a certain amount of “spin”. They blame a two day outage on their inability to self-heal “quickly” enough.

   Call me cynical, but that’s a pretty long outage ..

9. Mike H
   

   August 20th, 2007 at 5:45 am

   It would seem that there are a few other stories circulating about why the network went down. Slashdot reports on a russian hacker site who has posted some code which caused a massive DOS attack on the skype network.

   http://it.slashdot.org/article.....18/2233219

   Mike

10. Mladen Mihajlovic
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:19 am

    C’mon guys, I expect better from TechCrunch than this sensationalist headline. Windows users have enough shit to deal with without major sites like this blaming something on their OS when it’s not even their fault. Just because it might have been caused by loads of PC’s restarting, doesn’t mean the fault was Microsoft’s.

11. Deelip
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:25 am

    So each time microsoft releases a patch the skype will have to suffer right?
    Its crazy.

12. Sam Daams
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:25 am

    Hehe, very funny. Good thing I’m on a mac so I don’t feel like I’m to blame LOL Excellent way of strengthening the mac community; can feel a few blog posts coming!

13. jccodez
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:29 am

    How is it that window’s users caused the outage. It is a bug in their load balancing for authentication. Your national enquirer style reporting is best left to valley wag, they do a much better job.

14. Deals and Coupons
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:34 am

    Blame it on Windows. Always!

15. Damn DoS
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:38 am

    You know who responsible for Outage?

    Ads… They installed spyware.

    Why do you get job at Programming or network security?
    You can find tons of hidden spyware in Skype.

    It’s have something to do with marketshares. Don’t fucking crack it.

16. Duncan Riley
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 6:43 am

    Marco I agree to an extent, but if you read the Skype explanation this is how they explain it:
    was caused 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”
    and then goes on to note the bug. They are blaming patch Tuesday first, nearly blame shifting to same extent (note I said nearly) then sort of mumbling that oh wait, we had a bug as well. The truth is a combination of all these things, but I did find Skype’s spin interesting.

    Mladen
    Direct quote. Check Skype’s post: “caused by a massive restart of our user’s computers”. I’m not making this up so thanks for the claims of sensationalism, but even I’m clever enough to blame an outage on Windows…Skype did

17. Blake Brannon
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:01 am

    What a clutz, blame your problem on Windows. Good thing I’m on a Mac and had nothing to do with it. At least Skype got great publicity from this event.

18. Greg
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:05 am

    hahahahah

    Way to go, Skype.

19. Yusuf Motiwala
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:09 am

    sounds strange! Microsoft has been releasing patch every tuesday - why outage did not happen earlier?

20. Danny
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:17 am

    Duncan, if you agree with Marco than why the lame headline? Just drivin’ those clicks?

    I thought techcrunch was here to challenge the various ramblings of companies rather than cement them by taking spin at face value. You don’t seem to have cast a wary eye on this at all. Forget the past three years of patch tuesdays, the excuse feels weak to me because, for one, not all the computers worldwide reboot at once as the mumbling implies. Instead, there would be mass rebooting across 24 hours which should have given them time to figure out the problem as one part of the world started to go dark. Taking 36 hours to sort it is absurd. Regardless, it is still skype’s fault. They (and TechCrunch) should be leading with that.

21. geomark
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:24 am

    What is it with Mac users? P envy or something? Everytime there’s a Windows bug or something that can be blamed on Windows they jump on it.

    If Macs were more pertinent (i.e. they were the globally dominant platform) they might have been the problem for Skype.

    Macs are great. So are PCs. They’re just tools.

22. Richard
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:41 am

    Apparently, Skype is no “Wolverine” when it comes to self heaing. If windows patches /restarts are their “kryptonite”, then they have a huge problem. (Apologies forward the superhero refs)

23. Yezidi
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 7:42 am

    You know who else is responsible for the outage? That’s right…Hitler.

24. journalistPolice
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:05 am

    I caused the Skype outage? I’m a Windows user. How did I cause this? I’m so confused.

    If this site is supposed to be considered a legitimate source of news, shouldn’t the headline be something like, “Skype blames …” with some sense of attribution, rather than a statement of fact that I helped cause this outage?

    I’m throwing my machine out the window right now. I hate hurting people like this.

25. Aaronontheweb (AjaxNinja)
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:14 am

    I agree with Danny, Duncan. This just seems like a headline designed to make Windows haters on Digg or elsewhere salivate and drive clicks; it’s a misleading title and it’s not entirely honest.

26. steven
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:18 am

    First of all, this is an idiotic headline. How stupid is it to say “windows users caused outage” when that is likely 99% of their user base.

    Second, this is a LAME excuse. This is skype’s issue no matter how you spin it. Windows automatic updates have existed for a very long time now. There is absolutely no excuse or justification to try and skirt the blame onto microsoft. The bottom line is skype did not properly plan their infrastructure.

27. needlegun
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:43 am

    “Divorce caused Skype outage”

    Millions of divorced people who would otherwise have been engaged in healthy pursuits with their families and loved-ones, are instead spending countless hours locked away, using PCs as their only entertainment. Because of this, a far higher than expected number of PCs are switched on at any given time, and are thus being patched and rebooted - causing Skype’s outage…

    You see, it’s all about manufacturing sensationalist headlines. Obviously the guys at TechCrunch have been reading too many UK newspapers! =;o)

28. VPZone
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:46 am

    One more arguments against it.. Why this didn’t happen to other IMs - Yahoo. AOL, Messengers and others. Thank god I don’t use Skype and will probably never - GizmoProject is the way to go -those who knows will never tell you - they are happy that you are stuck with Skype. Skype is so 17th century product anyways.. only lame users use them as seen by lame execuses…

    Any to TC - you cannot fool us by creating catchy headlines for long - they never used word Windows in they posting and they clearly took the blames on their part as well…

29. Scott
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:49 am

    While Windows reboots are the technical explanation for what happened, Microsoft has no accountability for what happens to Skype. Skype needs to support their customers and scale their application to the reality of the environment they are serving. The reality is that Microsoft pushes updates every month and computers (usually) need to reboot when the updates come out. This has happened for a long time and should not be a surprise to anyone, including Skype. I am sure their designs accounted for this. Skype had a stellar record up to this point, but made a big mistake this month. I expect them to learn from it and not allow this sort of thing to happen again and/or have a failover system in place to ensure their critical (paying) customers are still served with minimal interruption. Looks like its time for some more infrastructure investment!

    Skype will survive, but needs to earn trust back from customers. This is a good reminder for consumers/businesses to have a backup for communication if the primary means of communication (Skype in this case) goes down. Businesses that moved their incoming calls to Skype must have had a nightmare situation on their hands. What do you do?

30. Liam Daly
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:49 am

    This is bull, Skype cant admit they messed up so they blame windows. There has been many patch tuesdays before skype went down last week, so I very much doubt it Windows caused it.

    Like I said they cant come up with a good enough excuse so they say “windows caused the skype outage”.

31. Tish Grier
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:53 am

    There was something *very* different about this particular Microsoft update. One of my computers is set to receive updates only when I tell it to–not automatically (some have really screwed things up, causing whole system reinstalls, etc). But it went off that Tuesday without me. I had read previously that this was a critical update with 14 patches, so it seems that Microsoft overrode user preferences for when to download–thus making it that whenever someone using MS turned on their computer, the updates happened, and so did the restarts, which it also forced after 4 minutes. I know that this interrupted my workflow a bit. So, I kind of think Skype has a point here….since I saw on one of my computers how I had no control over when I received the updates and when my computer restarted. I don’t think Skype could have anticipated the outage because they probably couldn’t have anticipated such a massive disruption to MS users.

32. blueice
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:58 am

    This might also coincide with what some British ISP’s having been complaining about. They also blame this last Tuesday’s patch updates for consuming very large amounts of bandwidth. Yes, Skype had a bug, but this should also prompt Microsoft to find a better way of delivering those updates. Perhaps by time-shifting them, or staggering the release or other methods. The point would be to distribute the updates over a period of time rather than all at once.

33. Ryan Spahn
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 8:58 am

    windows updates need to be done in the morning after waking up(LoL) and should be staggered!

34. Tihomir
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 9:16 am

    when are they going to fix these bugs or we are going to experience that one more time?

35. RustyS
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:00 am

    And that folks is how you write Digg bait.

36. Rostislav Siryk
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:18 am

    Isn’t it beautiful?

    Quantum physics says such things really possible. For example, ball can jump without applying any force to it. Why? As we know, everything consist of atoms. They are swinging around their respective positions. So, if all atoms of the ball will swing in the same direction at the same moment of time — ball will jump just by accident!

    Skype’s outage is nothing else as natural consequence of quantum physics rules.

    Because users like atoms.

37. Dan
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    The original article says:
    The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

    The TC article says:
    According to Skype the outage was caused by “a massive restart of our user’s computers…

    “triggered” is not the same as “caused”

38. Joshua
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 10:41 am

    Smells Fishy!

39. Jon
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 11:01 am

    No, actually, it’s the French… They were all on vacation last week and turned their computers off!

    C’mon Skype/eBay…

40. -gary
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 11:30 am

    At least they didn’t blame it on sub-prime lending or terroism. It’s good to have a consistent scapegoat in the IT world.

41. Rostislav Siryk
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 11:41 am

    Why French? I believe It was Canabians.

    There’s too much computers in the Canaba I believe. Too much risk. Let’s care more of each other.

    Today it’s Skype, tomorrow it will be famous YouTube worm - who knows?

    And day after tomorrow Winamp will strongly propose you to upgrade due to system vulnerability.

42. Scott
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    I agree that Microsoft could have a little more empathy in how they release their updates and “force” them upon users. Given their dominance, they do need to appreciated the impact they are having on others like Skype, ISPs, etc.

    However, it’s still Skype’s problem, not Microsoft’s. Microsoft should “work closely with their partners… yada yada yada”, but should not be the scapegoat.

43. holly
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 12:23 pm

    Well eBay itself is going on crazy. Skype is making strange claims. Why didnt my MSN messenger or Yahoo messenger go down ? Funny, anyways people are people, this is not going to do anything .. and the number of users that skype has will be the same .. and continue to grow.. after all where is the alternative ?

    lol on gary that was funny. Anyways seems this is a sign of voip recession.

44. Rich
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 1:08 pm

    Sounds like skype selfhealing fits the old expression

    “The doctor who treats himself has a fool for a doctor and an idiot for a patient. …

45. Rush
    

    August 20th, 2007 at 5:53 pm

    so basically it wasn’t a windows problem, it was a skypes problem they want to pawn off on someone else. fucking losers.

46. damien
    

    August 21st, 2007 at 12:51 am

    @holly: “Why didnt my MSN messenger or Yahoo messenger go down ?”
    Read the article before asking dumb questions! Doesn’t a phrase “revealed a previously unseen software bug” say that it WAS a bug in Skype’s software?

47. Rostislav Siryk
    

    August 21st, 2007 at 9:16 am

    Okay; to finally get to the truth I propose to complete a very simple online survey named Skype Windows Update Outage Poll. This one will let us know how manu people really did reboot their machines on August 16th 2007.

    Vote to reveal the truth!