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CommentFriday, August 17, 2007
VoIP company Skype experienced a massive outage due to a problem the company blamed on a deficient network software algorithm.
Signing in to Skype has been impossible over the past day, leaving tens of millions of Skype users without access to the service.
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| Skype Knocked Out By The Algorithm |
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Signing in to Skype has been impossible over the past day, leaving tens of millions of Skype users without access to the service.
Skype had completed some planned maintenance to the service earlier in the week. The problems began a few days later. Though Skype's Heartbeat blog showed the communication services are working, it also noted the problems with logging in to the service.
ZDNet's George Ou suggested the problems at Skype could be the result of a published exploit making the rounds on Russian forums:
If this is true, this sounds like the kind of low-cost non-brute force DoS (Denial of Service) attack that can bring down an entire service. Since Skype is still down, this may be a very plausible explanation.Skype said it isn't an attack causing the outage:
The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack. We love our customers too much to let that happen. This problem occurred because of a deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software. This controls the interaction between the user’s own Skype client and the rest of the Skype network.Skype, your customers just aren't feeling that love right now.
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Skype login problems
For me this is complexity problem.
Skype develops using some kind of open source with continuous updates.
The problem with this style of programming is that the interactions between the parts of the software are of order the square of the number of parts, so in some moment the system explode and actually crashes, as a system, although as we see the components by itself do not crash.
The problem can be seen in a more general way: we are using methods of witting software 15 years old and 20 years old certification techniques. This is valid not only for Skype. The technology is outdated. So we get what we pay – the errors are assumed and supposed in the method. There is no money to develop new methods, because it is cheaper to export the production or to make it “free” open source.
Well, in fact it is relatively easy to avoid such a situation. Just make it loosy.
Good luck to the Skype software teem! Rewind quickly!