[MW Forums]

Skype users are asking questions about what really went wrong with the service last week. more

[elCapiton]

It sure seams like a load of crap to me too. I know they rely on the P2P connections but I can't see so many people restarting their machines at the same time to make any difference, especially like the one guy said, this happens every month.

[Ronald_Schoedel]

I am no MS fanboy, but this excuse reeks to high heaven about like Apple's excuse some months ago when some iPods were shipped with viruses that infected Windows users. Blaming MS for everything in the world may be popular right now, but it isn't very mature or honest.
Ronald Schoedel

[dwielt]

Given their explanation of all the Windows reboots bringing down the network, I suppose the Mac community can help if we all stay logged on throughout the day the next time a big Windows update rolls out? LOL.

[lwdesign]

My question is: What would be so harmful about telling the truth about what happened?
It may be that Skype's technical guys are stumped and haven't got a clue what made the network go boom, and if that's the case, a simple "we don't know but we're looking into it" would suffice.
Saying "the Windows update did it" without explaining why this particular one did it when all other previous Tuesdays didn't is just silly. Sounds like the PR boys are frantically trying to come out with an excuse without getting advice from the technical guys. Putting out patently incorrect "why's" is scary for a high-tech company. It leads to dark speculation from the masses.
Hopefully eBay isn't acquiring its programmers by auction these days.

[Nobody]

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My question is: What would be so harmful about telling the truth about what happened?
It may be that Skype's technical guys are stumped and haven't got a clue what made the network go boom, and if that's the case, a simple "we don't know but we're looking into it" would suffice.
Saying "the Windows update did it" without explaining why this particular one did it when all other previous Tuesdays didn't is just silly. Sounds like the PR boys are frantically trying to come out with an excuse without getting advice from the technical guys. Putting out patently incorrect "why's" is scary for a high-tech company. It leads to dark speculation from the masses.
Hopefully eBay isn't acquiring its programmers by auction these days.

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Ebay can barely run its OWN service, let alone Skype too!
Have you ever filed a complaint with ebay or against ebay through their system?
If so, you already know the answer to your questions.
#1) Ebay often lies in responses to complaints about a vast array of problems, either deliberately or through incompetence. Their excuses here sound about as plausible as their canned automated responses to most Ebay complaints. It's just how they do business.
#2) Ebay never EVER admits guilt for their problems. They blame it on members or shift blame. I've seen 1 day auctions that don't get listed for 4-5 hours or longer auctions that don't get listed for almost a day or more and Ebay never admits it's their fault or that anything has happened to their system, nor do they ever refund Ebay fees even when it's their mistake. It's just how they do business.
#3) Ebay has often promoted and supported activities through their service that are now considered fraud and/or a trust & safety violation. Now they act like those activities never happened and admit no guilt and punish members for Ebay mistakes. It's just how they do business.
#4) Ebay run Paypal often is down or incapable of processing international shipping labels or simple payments of YOUR MONEY! Ebay's response is always to blame it on the Postal Service and never admit guilt. That's just how they do business.
#5) Ebay does admit guilt if and ONLY IF it's proven in a court of law through class action lawsuits. That's just how they do business. Period.
Seriously, if Ebay cannot handle the volume of auctions they currently have, how the hell can they handle the volume of VOIP phone calls in addition to that?
This standard Ebay-type response to a serious Skype problem is so stereotypically nonsensically Ebay-like, it's not even funny.

[jon12345]

I'm not saying the explanation is valid but it does have merit. As the Director of IT for a company that hosts websites and applications for thousands of customers I've seen this happen. The login use case can often times be quite cpu intensive (validate username, check authentication, query licensed options, find current messages... etc).
For instance on a normal day you may see 10% of the use base login in at any one time but if some event happened (power outage, code release, client patch requiring a restart) kicked all the users out and required them to login you may see a higher percentage of users executing the use case.
...and the fact is that in IT there is typically a tipping point; often called the hockey stick effect. The system runs fine and at a linear pace until it simply doesen't and then you see the consumption skyrocket. This is analogous (sp?) to a freeway. A freeway can only hold so many cars passing a certain point at a given time. The traffic flows smoothly until it reaches that tipping point and everyone sits in traffic. Moreover, it takes a long time for that traffic to die down (there is no inverse to the tipping point). Have you ever sat in traffic only to find that there was no cause? Then you know what I mean.
IT is very similar. The system may run fine with normal load profiles but change it slightly and OMG! everything has gone to hell and unless you have a strategy for getting it going again quickly then you've got a long road to hoe.
If Skype/Ebay is honest in their PR statement then I would ask if they limited login traffic to the system (throttled) while they recovered. It could have meant the difference between hours and minutes.
Flame away /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

[sherod]

I would suspect the real answer may point to serious questions about skypes viability and underlying capital infrastructure.
If you can't afford or haven't spent wisely then you can wind up in a position where you have points of failure which are extremely sensitive and have massive impact - and which cost more than your business to fix. Secondly, if your internal controls suck or are in disarray, you might not the processes in place to prevent changes which could bring down a network.
Both of those sorts of things may not be something that you want to let the world know!

[John_Scott]

I do not buy into the whole thing myself. I think Skype can explain this better than what they did.
But if their defense. They have to use a system that they do not control for the most part to provide their service. The internet is nowhere near as stable as a phone network. Because at least a phone network is dedicated to a spacific purpose. The internet has many user's with diferent demands each day. As high bandwidth content comes into play such as movie downloads and other high bandwidth content.
I think we will see a strain put on VOIP companies that try and provide reliable service.
I think customers who use Skype and other similar services will have to accept outages at times, it's just part of the deal.

[TheCount]

ebay, now skype's parent company, has never been straightforward with problems at their auction site, so don't expect them to necessarily tell you the truth with skype. for the longest time ebay kept their mouths shut as crooks from russia, chechnia, nigeria etc. used stolen ebay accounts to defraud and steal (it happened to me so i know what i am talking about).

[hayesk]

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I am no MS fanboy, but this excuse reeks to high heaven about like Apple's excuse some months ago when some iPods were shipped with viruses that infected Windows users.

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I see we have another press myth - just like iPhone batteries don't last more than a year, iPods make you go deaf, and MS bought Apple back in '97 for $150 million.

[debohun]

It is not clear what actually did happen. It is obvious, at least in my mind, that Skype's explanation is public relations spin -- in short baloney. The supposed Windows updates that Skype is citing were rolled out slowly, as is typical, over an extended period of time, and mostly several days before the actual Skype failure. What Skype claims simply did not occur.
What is even more suspicious for me is that this problem coincided with the release of a beta version of the program which accessed my Address Book without asking permission. If Skype released millions of betas with that "feature," either accidentally or intentionally turned on, and if the program was further attempting to upload those trillions(?) of address book listings back to Skype, then of course their servers were swamped. And, of course, they aren't about to admit it. I don't know that the uploads happened, because I didn't have Little Snitch loaded on my machine. It is now on my purchase list, as a result though, and I will be off-loading Skype as soon as my minutes run out. However, the fact that Skype would even presume to invade my hard drive without asking my permission, even if it was only to copy data locally, indicates they cannot be trusted.
Another poster asks why Skype wouldn't just tell us the truth? Why doesn't Starbucks just tell us the truth about a "Tall" being a small? Why doesn't the White House just tell us the truth about WMDs, and a whole bunch of other things? Why doesn't your kid just tell you the truth the broken vase? Why? Because we live in a corrupt culture where the concept of "truth" has been lost. When those who value "truth" stop doing business with those companies, political parties, or neighbors, who don't get "truth," maybe we'll turn that around.

[djgamble]

What's the issue?
It's fixed now whatever it was, everyone can go online and even if you don't believe Skype's reasons for the service going down, they fixed the issue so it really doesn't matter 1 bit what their reasons are! I have no good reason not to believe them. Lots of users logging in at the same time simultaneously crashed their server-end software. So over 36 hours they updated their server-end software (maybe even hardware) and bam, it's fixed. No issues!
Tell me! Who cares? MSN, ICQ, AOL... you name it have all gone down in the past. The companies fixed the problems and weren't accused of telling lies.
What has Skype got to hide? Nothing!
If they were hacked... who cares? They've fixed the hole and no one was put at risk of losing money or personal information through any outcomes of the attack (although they weren't attacked, they told us this!)