Black Thursday and Friday - the days that Skype forgot

Skype took a big credibility hit on Thursday when an unknown number of people could not log in to the one of the most well known VoIP clients in the market today.

Take a deep breath and hope this is some glitch in the software and not the limitation of the peer to peer network capabilities.

The problem started out as a login problem and there people started receiving delayed IM sessions hit the client. The IM sessions have often been a bit flaky and I often receive a delay in getting them (upwards of 2 days in some cases). Thinking back I wonder if this was the start of a problem that mushroom clouded for them on Wednesday/Thursday depending where you are in the world.

They have been working hard to fix the problem and for me at least service seems to be more stable. After a laboured login I at least maintain a session now.

At first it was hard to tell as with Skype normally being so efficient at finding a connection I assumed it was the flaky ADSL infrastructure at my end in Thailand doing it's normal drop the connection on the paying customer. After the standard restart procedures Skype was still sickly so a quick ping of the heartbeat blog made me aware of the problem.

It certainly sends the message that much of this technology isn't quite ready for mass adoption of business. The Telco's are probably rubbing their hands issuing "I told you so" but don't rest too well as I'm sure that the busy little Skypers will plug whatever hole appeared and service will be back disrupting again soon.

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Om Malik
Andy Abramson
The Register