Should Skype Sue Microsoft?
After about three days of being offline, it appears that VoIP phone service Skype is now back up and running. But what caused all of the problems?
According to Skype, it all started when a massive amount of people’s computers rebooted when the completed a Windows update and then attempted to all reconnect with the Skype network at the same time. The Skype network could not handle the heavy load and down it came!
Now that the smoke has cleared, it’s time to start passing out blame! (I say this tongue in cheek!) Do you thing that Skype should hold Microsoft responsible for the failure of their network system?
Background Reading
- Skype blames outage on user reboot - Times Online, UK
- Skype issues apology for ‘outage’ - BBC News, UK
- Could Skype Outage Have Long Term Effects - VoIP News Australia
- Windows Users Caused Skype Outage - TechCrunch
- Skype denies failure was due to DoS attack - IT PRO
- Skype Works on Software Flaw Suspected in Worldwide Outage - Washington Post
- Skype glitch highlights competition - Monsters and Critics
As usual, if you have more to say than what is in the poll, let us know in the comments.
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21 Responses to “Should Skype Sue Microsoft?”
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Dave Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 8:54 amHow the hell is it Micro$oft’s fault that Skype’s severs couldn’t handle the load. Maybe its time for a little upgrade? I feel it shouldn’t have taken three days to get it back up and running anyway. Wasn’t there an article on here about having a loss prevention plan?
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Wyrdone Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 8:55 amMicrosoft, as capitalistic as it is, should not be held responsible for poor design on the part of Skype.
If your making a distributed system with massive numbers of people who need to all authenticate at the same time, then you need to take into account the fact you might have a large percentage try and authenticate all at once. And if you cannot plan to handle the peak surge loads, to not point fingers anywhere else.
Skype should talk to MMO vendors who all deal with this issue as well. Blizzard deals with peak authentication surges all the time when the release a new patch and everyone patches and then tries to login right away. Sure they have had their issues with the Authentication servers, but rarely are they down for more than an hour or so.
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Casey Atherton Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 10:14 amWhile technically it could be claimed that the outage was “Microsoft’s fault,” they in now way can be held responsible. It is as simple as Skype couldn’t handle the load, so they are the only one that is responsible.
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JohnMu Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 10:14 amTheir excuse is that lots of users rebooted their PCs at the same time? Wow. What next? Too many users with the letter “e” in their user name? Is this the first time that users have installed Windows updates and rebooted their PCs?
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Tim Fehlman Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 10:35 amThis is what I love about DCoT readers. You guys are willing to put your emotions aside and truly look at the issues!
Tim
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TechShep Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 10:55 amDoes any large business now days consider the possibility that the problem is their own fault and that suing is not always the way to solve problems? Of course it is not Microsoft’s fault (as much as I dislike Microsoft) It would only be Microsoft’s fault if the update directly stopped Skype from working. I think the court system deserves to be sued.
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John May Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 11:03 amRidiculous! Very poor planning on Skype’s part.
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Jonathan Rothwell Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 11:24 amI myself think that the blame can be passed both ways. In particular, while Skype’s network should have been able to hold out for a bit longer during this onslaught, Microsoft should have realised that a lot of machines connecting to a server at the same time would cause ructions. IMO they could have easily staggered the updates over two or three days.
Let’s not also forget that this affected clients on Macs and Linux boxes, who weren’t updating their machines. But it’s also important not to overlook the fact that the Skype system should have been designed to handle such loads.
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TechShep Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 1:49 pmHonestly, how hard would it be for Skype to figure out how many people at a time they can handle, then give an (annoying, but disaster preventing) “there are too many users logged in, try again later” message when they cant handle any more.
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Andy Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 3:05 pmI don’t believe Skype’s excuse for 1 minute - after all, if that was the case then Skype would be crashing every 2nd Tuesday of the month - which as far as I know it’s not. I could understand it if a patch from microsoft broke skype’s protocol, but not the fact of too many people rebooting. I’d almost suggest Microsoft should be suing Skype for libel
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JC Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 5:09 pmI was quite annoyed by the Skype breakdown since I use it to communicate with my other team members and I’m happy it didn’t happen on a day I was travelling when e-mail isn’t enough.
The thing is : I followed their blog and ridiculous posts to make people believe there were advancements… I think that for a long time, the Skype folks didn’t understand what the problem was.
There is a theory floating around that I like quite a bit, which is that Skype had been hacked due to a flaw in their protocol.
If we think about such a scenario, it is likely that the hackers didn’t stop spamming the servers with their bad packets, message strings to cause the DDOS… every attempt to come back online was futile because the hackers were probably spamming the servers like crazy.
To fix the problem, Skype had to fix the software’s flaw it on all their servers, and it had taken time… 3 days, I’m not sure it is so long it should have taken…Anyway, as everyone else mentionned, Skype’s excuse is ridiculous… it isn’t the first patch Tuesday… there are patch Tuesday, huh, that’s it, every month and why now ?
And even if that was the case, it is Skype’s fault to not having carried the load… after all, a good vendor also needs to know its environment… it is like walking on a high way and then sue everyone because you got hurt because there were cars on this high way…
If that’s the real cause, and I doubt it, know your environment… the Internet isn’t only yours Skype.
People may argue it isn’t Microsoft’s either, but I wonder how many people’s butts these automatic updates saved and how many virus outbreaks they prevented… Internet’s security comes first in my book (that said, last month’s tuesday, one of the PCs in my network got BSOD because of one of the updates released last month, due to a conflict with a driver… but that’s another whole subject).I’m also curious to know how many PCs get switched on and off every second in the world… I’m sure updates aren’t needed for this figure to be really big.
As I wrote earlier, I visited the blog and was frustrated by the lame excuses and poor advancement posts that were made here… even if they had no idea when the service would be back and running, I think they should have explained the problem… it is what a company that is open to its consumers do, but obviously, a company that makes everything to keep its protocol closed and as proprietary as possible (I’m not an open-source zealot, but even in fully commercial products, I think that if the protocol has gotten popular, it should be open or at least documented to allow interoperability : Skype would be much better without their own bloated client and I would be a much happier man if I had an alternative not consuming between 30 and 50 MB of RAM when idle).
All these poor excuses make me think that Skype/eBay doesn’t want to admit what really happened : either they screwed up somewhere or either they were hacked : as I said, I like this theory, because when you try to hide facts, come up with lame excuses, or plain lie, it is that you have things that you don’t want other people to figure out : being hacked is really one of them, but I can’t think of any company in 2007 still acting like that.
After all, true hacking or not, it doesn’t really matter, because if you think about it, Skype almosts admits they had a DDOS flaw : according to my definition of DDOS, it is an attack distributed by several computers to flood a system with requests and bring it down… even if it was indeed due to the reboot following the MS updates, it seems this perfectly matches the definition of a DDOS vulnerability, even if they were actually taken down by their own, innocent users…
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David Morris Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 6:21 pmBasically, I don’t think that Skype has any reason to sue Microsoft. Plenty of services are affected when systems reboot. Messenger services, for example. However, these services seem to deal with the reboot without any problems. Skype should have designed for this type of occurance.
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Barry Says:
August 20th, 2007 at 10:30 pmI blame Microsoft for everything. They’re the reason the sun rises in the south-east.
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Christoph Says:
August 21st, 2007 at 7:48 amWhile Skype is (sort of) blaming Microsoft for this problem, they certainly aren’t going to sue them. They explain there reasoning in greater detail in this blog post here.
I was never out that long. Skype (for me) was only down a day.
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Dexter Says:
August 21st, 2007 at 10:34 amI think Skype cannot sue Microsoft.. It is their fault noty to be prepared on such things. They knew that their user is increasing . So they have to be prepared on such cases like this.
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Bart Says:
August 21st, 2007 at 12:30 pmThis is so typical this day and age; blame someone else for your own short mistake. As many people mentioned, this isnt the first time there have been Microsoft Updates that required a reboot. Skype should have seen this comming and if they didnt, well too bad. Maybe they should send all their customers an email saying when they can reboot. If your last name is A-F, only reboot on Mondays. Prior Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance.
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Barry Says:
August 21st, 2007 at 5:41 pmHey!! Who’s that chick next to my post??!!
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MrJR Says:
August 21st, 2007 at 7:54 pmWhat is there to debate? Skype have offered a pretty complete response to the points above and accepted responsibility for the outage:
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MrJR Says:
August 22nd, 2007 at 5:18 amSorry - Link to that response is heartbeat.skype.com, see Aug 21 comments.
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marcus Says:
August 22nd, 2007 at 8:46 amI thought it was Skype update. Not only Windows users run Skype. There is Linux, Mac OS X and mobile users too.
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Dianwen Says:
August 25th, 2007 at 3:39 pmI think that most people that say it’s Micro$oft’s fault are people who dislike the company.
