Status Problems Break Skype For Many Users; Quick Fix Promised

Many Skype users have been affected this morning by a glitch which has rendered the service unusable or only semi-usable. The BBC says that problems have been reported in Japan, the UK, and Australia, and that Skype support staff have promised a "quick fix." A message on the Skype page says "f you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them.. A small number of messages to group chats are not being delivered, but in most cases you can still instant message your contacts.. If you aren't signed in to Skype, you may be experiencing difficulty when attempting to sign in. Any changes to your Skype account such as your Credit balance or your profile details might take a little while to be displayed."

Comments

Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Erik Hensema]

Skype has been broken since 09:00 UTC. That's about 5 hours now. I think we can safely say that the quick fix didn't happen.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[NotInHere]

Damn, their uptime this year will be less than 99,94%!
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...
http://www.wolframalpha.com/in...

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Dutcher]

Skype has been broken since 09:00 UTC. That's about 5 hours now. I think we can safely say that the quick fix didn't happen.

Its very, very annoying! It's the third time this month that I have problems with Skype.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Anonymous Coward]

5 hours is a long time to find, fix, test, and deploy a fix in your mind? Seriously?.

If I recall correctly, Gmail once went down due to some kind of a severe bug. The fix took 5 minutes.

No, fix to the main issue was not made in 5 minutes, but the service was back and operational in 5 minutes. Their automated malfunction detection reverted to a previous software version.

The end result is still the same: only 5 minutes of downtime for users, which qualifies as "fixed".

I think we can safely say that you don't develop software for a living, or at least that if you do then you are completely incompetent.

Or perhaps he just is familiar with system administration.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes it is very long time and yes he might be developing for a living. You are probably not doing your job well if you think a service like this can be crippled for few hours and think its normal.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[mrchaotica]

5 hours is a long time to find, fix, test, and deploy a fix in your mind? Seriously?.

No, but it is a long time to fail over to the redundant systems, roll back whatever configuration change you did last, or that kind of thing.

I think we can safely say that you don't develop software for a living, or at least that if you do then you are completely incompetent.

Everything about this is wrong.

First of all, the issue is operations, not development. Even if development screwed up, it shouldn't matter because the deployment would be rolled back. (Actually, ideally the deployment wouldn't happen in the first place because QA would have found the issue first and told development to go back and fix their shit.)

Second, if you're in operations and you don't think 5 hours is a long time to get the service back up then you are completely incompetent!

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Jawnn]

Damn, their uptime this year will be less than 99,94%!

Three nines. Whoop-de-doo. I'm just glad I was able to easily derail the suggestion that "We should just use Skype for all of the business phones..." If I hadn't, I'd still get to say, "I told you it was a bad idea", but there's always that look that says, "Well, you should have told us harder", when the IT prophecy cometh true. Ya know?
Setting aside the mobile networks (who still do a pretty good job when it comes to availability), I'll wager that the PSTN has an uptime of 5 nines, at least.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Wowsers]

No, Skype has been broken since Microsoft bought it and "improved" it.

Small mercies the Linux version of Skype hasn't been "fixed" the same way the PC, Mac, Andorid versions have.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Zero__Kelvin]

The problem isn't that the service is down. Switching over to a redundant system with the same software bug won't fix anything. If it was an outage you would be correct. They didn't say skype will be back up, which is operations. They said "We have detected an issue that is affecting Skype in a number of ways." You made an argument against your reasonable 5 hour claim merely by pointing out that it could be an operations issue. They need to find out what the issue is first. If it was a simple operations issue then sure, but clearly it isn't. It might take 5 hours just to determine if it is an operations issue or a development issue alone.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[mrchaotica]

Switching over to a redundant system with the same software bug won't fix anything.

In most cases*, the redundant system won't have the same software bug because the ops people weren't so stupid that they tried to upgrade it at the same time. That means any issue that causes downtime is almost always an operations issue, because if it were a development issue then the devs could fix it at their leisure while the old version of the service stayed up.

(*the exception, of course, are preexisting bugs that are triggered by some external factor, like a DDOS attack or a time-related overflow.)

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[vux984]

I'll wager that the PSTN has an uptime of 5 nines, at least.

Sure. But at what cost. Check out what they bill you for even just a simple 8 lines into a small business office. That runs hundreds even thousands of dollars.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[Zero__Kelvin]

"In most cases*, the redundant system won't have the same software bug because the ops people weren't so stupid that they tried to upgrade it at the same time. ... (*the exception, of course, are preexisting bugs that are triggered by some external factor, like a DDOS attack or a time-related overflow.)"

Keep thinking. If you really have a clue what you are talking about you will realize that you have listed just two items on a very long list. Your assumption that most bugs are immediately evident and exposed at the time of deployment is absurdly false. If the bug didn't require a special condition to trigger it then it would have likely been caught at test time and the code would never have been deployed. Ergo, you need to invert your condition so that it says: "In most cases a bug that makes it to the deployment stage is non-trivial, and triggered by a special set of conditions such as [very_long_list]". Reverting to the previous version does absolutely nothing to ensure, or even assure, that the same bug is not lying dormant waiting to be re-triggered. Only by carefully evaluating and understanding the bug can one ever hope to be assured that it has been fixed. This doesn't happen in 5 hours, ever.

Re:Broken since 09:00 UTC

[gweihir]

Classic phone reliability is deemed acceptable if the they have 5 nines. Less is seen as something that needs fixing.

Bullshit

[joaommp]

Skype is not only preventing status updates and showing users offline.

Both me and my girlfriend, from different points in the country and different ISPs, are actually UNABLE TO CONNECT.

Re:Bullshit

[pecosdave]

Gosh, makes you wonder if changing it from encrypted peer to peer to unencrypted in the middle for NSA client-server was a good idea.

Re:Bullshit

[kav2k]

It prevents your status update from "Offline" to "Online". That shows up as "connecting", but if you try it, it will pass IMs still.

Re:Bullshit

[wonkey_monkey]

Yes, just as it says in the summary.

Re:Bullshit

[joaommp]

I went to bed with skype connected, woke up to it trying to connect, so, once again, bullshit. I was connected.

Re:Bullshit

[joaommp]

I went to bed with it connected, woke up to it trying to connect.

I tried sending messages anyway, both before the news came out and after. No luck.

Re:Bullshit

[fisted]

You're repeating yourself, and yes, we get it, you're very excited about finally having found a girlfriend over the internet.

FWIW, what you're complaining about is right in TFS. It says

As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them.

Try reading more than what you want to read next time. You probably still get to point out that you have a girlfriend!! somewhere.

Re:Bullshit

[fisted]

Correction: It appears you have only read the first two words of the headline. Sigh.

Re:Bullshit

[joaommp]

My point was, it does not affect only those who are trying to connect. It affected those who were connected as well, as I leave my computer and skype always on. The summary says that if you were connected, you won't be able to see or change the status but that the messages to individual users would pass. Which is untrue/impossible to test, because every machine I had access to that had skype connected all night long lost connection to skype and any attempt to send messages directly user to user has failed.

And your envy related jokes about the girlfriend were totally unnecessary. You probably still get to point out that you are a poor little thing do not have a girlfriend/boyfriend/dog/octopuss/whatever somewhere.

Re:Bullshit

[fisted]

Well, let's practice reading comprehension a bit, shall we?

TFS says

f(sic) you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them

And now you're complaining that you can't sign in in the first place. Well guess what, /if/ you managed to sign in, you'd in turn be ... signed in. Let's see what TFS has to say about that:

f(sic) you're signed in to Skype, you will not be able to change your status and your contacts will all show as offline even if they are online. As a result, you won't be able to start Skype calls to them

So your complaint is meaningless and obvious to people remotely computer-literate.
(Also, note that the statement starts with "if". Do you understand that "if it is raining today, i'll visit the museum" does not imply that i wouldn't visit the museum were it a sunny day?)

Or is your point that TFS didn't explicitly say "Signed-in users might lose their connection"? Well no shit.

It figures you're a skype user.

And your envy related jokes about the girlfriend were totally unnecessary. You probably still get to point out that you are a poor little thing do not have a girlfriend/boyfriend/dog/octopuss/whatever somewhere.

Is a "no, you!"-kind of reply all you can come up with for a proper comeback? Good grief.
FWIW I prefer to have my partners not "somewhere" but "around". This might seem unorthodox to someone used to hooking up with people over the internet, but maybe you'll find it enjoyable some time in the future, too. Best of luck!

Re:Bullshit

[aybiss]

"Is a "no, you!"-kind of reply all you can come up with for a proper comeback?"

He/she probably decided a dick like you that lashes out at random and clearly has huge issues about relationships wouldn't be worth the effort.

I've seen people be all sorts of idiots on here, this is about the most unjustified and personal attack ever.

PS before you ask I'm married AND know where my wife is. Is that OK with you?

Re:Bullshit

[fisted]

"Is a "no, you!"-kind of reply all you can come up with for a proper comeback?"

He/she probably decided a dick like you that lashes out at random and clearly has huge issues about relationships wouldn't be worth the effort.

Odd that it was worth the effort to reply at all then, wouldn't you think?

I've seen people be all sorts of idiots on here, this is about the most unjustified and personal attack ever.

It was justified by the stupidity of the initial post, which starts boldly with "Bullshit" and then goes on to

Skype is not only preventing status updates and showing users offline...Both me and my girlfriend, from different points in the country and different ISPs, are actually UNABLE TO CONNECT.

If you don't see the stupidity of this, let me rephrase it for you:

Skype is not only preventing status updates [...] [b]oth me and my girlfriend [...] are actually UNABLE TO [change our status from offline to online].

Well duh. Heck, it is currently mismodded at +2, Funny; Maybe people are granting him the benefit of the doubt, I don't know.

PS before you ask I'm married AND know where my wife is. Is that OK with you?

Why would you believe i would have asked that? It seems you require some practice in reading comprehension as well, given that you apparently weren't able to follow the conversation at all...

Re:The only reason Skype exists

[NotInHere]

Its not just that. Of course, skype has developed one of the best NAT hole punching algorithms on this planet, but it provides more than just a "dumb wire", like providing friends lists for every user, general state of the user "online, not online, doesn't want to be disturbed, etc", and chat.

Re:Skype?

[pecosdave]

Hangouts works great, I'm trying to break the iPhone / Facetime habit those locked ecosystem people seem to be suffering on.

From what I can tell Hangouts works rather well on that ecosystem too.

Distributed realtime chat ..

[nickweller]

How can a distributed peer-to-peer chat system suffer such an outage, unless it isn't really distributed peer-to-peer anymore. Makes me question the reliability of these all-eggs-in-one-basket cloud services.

Re:Distributed realtime chat ..

[Anonymous Coward]

It has not been distributed peer-to-peer for a while.

Microsoft turned it into a easy backdoor for NSA years ago.

Re:Distributed realtime chat ..

[joaommp]

The login and status change part needs always some central components. The comunication between two users, however, needs not.

Re:Distributed realtime chat ..

[Dunbal]

"Distributed" is marketing bullshit anyway. When you start your computer your program has to look somewhere for an entry point into the network, be it one of many nodes to a database, the last good node, a root node, a hard-coded node etc. No program can just pull a successful lookup to the "distributed" database out of its digital ass. So if you take out that or those nodes, it really doesn't matter what kind of voodoo code you write. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

A small number

[ITRambo]

A small number of users to Microsoft is, more often than not, millions of affected users. Not a small number. But, it makes good PR.

Not happy

[CharmaineVictoriaMor]

Skype's still not working, won't let me log on the app but is working on the internet, do we know when its going too be fixed???

Affected in the USA

[laie_techie]

The company I work at uses Skype for internal communications for when email is considered too slow. I'm unable to connect this morning, and I'm in the USA - not one of the countries listed as being affected by the BBC.

Re:Affected in the USA

[dafradu]

Its still down for me in Brazil. So yeah, its global...

Why are people using this already?

[Anonymous Coward]

Skype isn't an open protocol, so there's zero competition for implementations and The One implementation is impossible to audit for security. Given that, it's not a good idea to be using it, except perhaps as a curiosity.

Maybe Skype will come out of beta some day, but if you're using it in 2015: too soon!

Re:Why are people using this already?

[NotInHere]

Of course, they TTS the communications, its not storage which is the problem.

Confirm broken in Norway

[Esteanil]

Tested on two computers + 1 android phone (on a separate connection). Unable to see anyone online (Even Echo / Sound Test Service is offline). A few users appeared online until attempting to call them (including Echo).

Tried signing out on one of the computers, and signing back in appears broken. (takes forever and fails with wrong credentials error. I *might* be misremembering my password, but I doubt it.)

A glitch?!!?

[vikingpower]

That is not a bloody glitch. That's a fucking critical bug, close to being a showstopper.

Re:Skype?

[t0y]

Hangouts is also a locked ecosystem.

SSL Added and removed here :-)

[nickweller]

NSA infiltrates links to Yahoo, Google data centers worldwide, Snowden documents say

Re:Skype?

[pecosdave]

Sure it's a bit locked, but it's at least cross-platform.

Re:Skype?

[t0y]

So is skype, doesn't make it more open.

Re:Skype?

[pecosdave]

Either of them is more accessible than Facetime.

I can SMS with Hangouts.