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Skype Blames Microsoft Patch Tuesday for Outage
brajesh writes to tell us that Skype has blamed its outage over the last week on Microsoft's Patch Tuesday. Apparently the huge numbers of computers rebooting (and the resulting flood of login requests) revealed a problem with the network allocation algorithm resulting in a couple days of downtime. Skype further stressed that there was no malicious activity and user security was never in any danger.
I am not a MS fanboy but it needs to be pointed out that Skype blamed a flaw in their self-healing algorithm that was highlighted by patch Tuesday. They took responsibility.
That's what Skype says. Doesn't sound like they're blaming anyone but themselves.
In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
I've had much longer downtimes for much lamer reasons. Of course, I'm a pretty bad programmer.
Maybe the average machine had more downtime on this month's reboot? Or the reboots happened in a more concentrated time window?
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
That's when the patches occurred.
I had to leave town and usually leave Thunderbird up and running to filter my mail on my IMAP account so my laptop syncs without having to redo all the filters I have in place. After no reboot on Tuesday I was relieved that I wouldn't have an issue with a down T-bird unless the power went out - which never happens unless I leave town (happened only once before).
Sure enough, none of my mail is filtered after Thursday. Come home this morning and see "Your computer has been recently updated" balloon.
if you steal from one source, that is plagiarism, if you steal from many, well, that's just research.
RTFA. It's not bad planning. It's a bug in their networking software.
Windows XP Home has automatic login as the default, with no username/password screen.
*Still* negative function...
They are direct connections. If possible they are anyway. Skype uses several tricks to punch through NAT firewalls also, if that doesn't work only then do you go through an intermediate server. Most of the time you have direct connections though.
This was a problem with the login servers. Reading comprehension?
All the central server has to do is instruct each endpoint to UDP tickle each other, then they can talk directly through NAT.
"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
That's exaclty what skype does. All voice (video/chat/file) flows are encrypted, and they go from you to your party. Only if both of you are behind a NAT or/and firewall, then skype routes the call through another node. If you want more infos, have a look at "Revealing Skype Traffic: when randomness plays with you" and references therein... http://www.sigcomm.org/ccr/drupal/?q=node/245
had them set up to automatically log in to Windows and Skype (and last time I checked, you needed TweakUI for the former)
Faaaaaalse. Since win2k, you've had the built-in ability to select an account, and have your machine behave as if that account was "logging in" automatically.
Granted, MS makes that setting a little hard to find, something that Tweak UI remedies, but still.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
The Mac version has video
They're "running" on whatever you're running on. Skype runs distributed across the network of PCs belonging to its users.
Skype's model is somewhat controversial. My own company does not allow employees to run Skype on company issued laptops because the closed code is running distributed and there is no way of knowing where company confidential conversations might be landing.