Skype Down?
16 08 2007
Many of you may have noticed that Skype is not working. According to the Skype Blog:
UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.
Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible.
As of 11:20am EST, Skype is still not working. I’ve seen it appear to be connected, but no users show up as online. Hope that they will be up soon!
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Skype is down in S. Korea as well, despite rumors that this is primarily affecting Europe and no users in US appear” affected. However, my spouse in CO, USA says it was up and down showing users connected then not.
@D. Church: wow, sounds like a real worldwide outage - thanks for reporting to us all the way from South Korea!
I will confirm D. Church’s assertion; Skype is most definitely sporadic in the US. We tunnel to remote locations and Skype is (except for one session that lasted only a few seconds) non-functional, i.e., failing to login, at multiple locations in the central US.
@Kirk: do you mean that it is currently sporadic, or has happened to you in the past. Typically, it’s been very reliable for me.
Oops-I can see how it looks like that. I meant “at this moment.” I noticed that I could not login this morning (it’s been this way a few hours), verified this with my contacts, and ended up here while exploring the issue. To be fair, Skype is (and has been) a *very reliable* service.
It’s out in the UK too. I been trying all day cos I need to do some Skypeout calls overseas. Must say it’s been very reliable for over 3 years of use, this has been the longest outage.
@Matty: thanks for giving us a report from the UK!
@Kirk: that’s what I thought you meant, just clarifying.
Skype also out in Poland - so feeling a little cut off
@Mark: thanks for the report in Poland!
Skype is also unavaliable in Denmark.
@Daniel: thank you for the Denmark report as well!
A colleague I regularly chat with in Pakistan has e-mailed to say it’s down there too. I’ve been watching it connecting for a few seconds, here in the UK, then going off again.
Skype is out completely in Texas. Just thought I would throw that out there.
Skype is not available in Bulgaria Too
Skype is out in Wisconsin, US! Just bought a Skype phone two days ago and I was getting a bit leary about the service until I read some of the blogs in here. Thanks for the comments of the good quality service of Skype. I plan to use it instead of the traditional phone.
Skype Login Page indicates their system is down. Logins are disabled and new software downloads also disabled. No ETA on when it will be back up.
I guess I will haveto wait to try out the new SkypeForiPhone service….
Charles
Ian, Justin, Peter, and Matt: thanks very much for your reports!
Skype out and gone wild in Finland too
- let’s hope things will get resolved asap
skype is out in Lithuania too
Skype is out in Austria too - for more than 10 hours already!
Skype is out in Guyana (South America)
Skype is unavailable in Hungary too.
Sooooo frustrated. I use it for IM and long distance calls at work. Gonna try out Jangl or Jaja and see if it can work for the calling.
it is out in US- San Francisco area as well….
@beetraham, mantviss, mario, steven, sebi: thanks for the outage reports! I’ll have to make a map of everyone’s reports! Keep them coming!
@john - haven’t tried either of these services. Please let us know how they go.
Skype is out in Ireland too.
@fred & michal - thanks for adding, more to add to the map
Down in Germany and Westafrica (Cape Verde) too. Seems to be global…
Skype is being down from this morning here in Italy too, many friends of mine noticed the same problem: just not connecting, or connecting for a few second, showing no contacts online.
@francis, kzk: 3 more sites to add to the map, thanks!
Skype’s been out all morning in California.
And I know from contacts it’s out in China as well.
Look, come down guys. It even says on the website - “Skype is not a telephony replacement service”. Just dust off your pho
Skype is down in Switzerland…
@eric, and franky: thanks for the locations!
@stolichnaya: agreed. While Skype is a great service, I like having a backup phone as well.
Out in Belgium too….
It is out in Sweden all day as well for most users. Been wasting far too much time todaythinking it was an Microsoft Security update or an Norton update that caused the problem…
Skype is down in Slovenia… I’ve tested several IPS (SiOL, UPC Telemach etc.). I even updated my Cisco Linksys CIT 400
OK folks, let’s get over it. Skype is down and up worldwide, and has published an announcement about it at Heartbeat.Skype.Com and elsewhere.
Never rely on the internet as your sole source of communication. You should have a land-line where possible, mobile/cell with alternate service if possible. Your business should not rely on any one server and you should always ask yourself how you plan to call for help if an emergency occurs and one service or another is down. Welcome to the 21st century.
Skype has been, and is still out in Australia
Its now midnight in the UK. I tried older versions of Skype and still the same problem. It seems a little better now; I mean I get connected and see about 390K users online (I have never seen it that low!). Then it looses the connection and goes into its connecting cycle again.
I wonder if someone is creating a ‘denial of service’ attack on Skype? I mean flooding their servers with network traffic? If so then there are some really sick people out there
In my case skype failure to connect coincided with (auto) installation of windows XP patches. MS made these patches available for download yesterday.
Assuming 90%~ skype-p2p computers Windows (XP) based one may relate these two events ^-^
Skype out in Mexico all day, possibly last night as well, who knows, my internet was down as well…..ahhhhh….TelMex.
@starbuck: good point. On a similar thought, you wouldn’t trust Google or Yahoo maps if you were racing to a hospital. Technology doesn’t replace a brain and common sense
@kevin: thanks for checking in - you’re the first to respond in the Southern hemisphere
@Alastair: thanks for the UK update! It is possible that someone is flooding the Skype network - I’m anxious to hear on how this all pans out.
@Jack: wow, adding those other patches at the same time probably added to the frustration.
@Nancy: sorry to hear, but I’ll add Mexico to the list!
Metagg is tracking this post…
Find out what Social News Sites are discussing this post over at metagg.com…
kya ho gaya hai bhai kuch karo
Skype is most definitely down in the US … well up and down… its logging on and off and no particular intervals. If it comes on .. you can make calls and it will remain connected even if is goes back to saying connecting. I hope it’s fixed soon. I hadn’t realized quite how dependant I have become using Skype. It’s a great service.
This is a big deal for us! We just bought a Skype Polycom and so all of our conference calls and business related calls over Skype.
By the way… The Skype Polycom is the best speaker phone we’ve ever used (about $100) and we’ve tried the really expensive ones!
Hope this is a one time thing!
Out in Mexico as well
Hola, here in argentina is out too, suerte , hope its available soon
Here, in Latvia, Riga, Skype was down the whole day, yesterday the16-th of August. Today it was temporarily connecting and disconnecting with sporadic intervals. Now it is connected good (for some hours already) but only 1 user of my Contact list is On. My client shows there are 2 735 083 users in ihe Skype network (at 16:54 GMT+2).
Hope it’ll be soon online again and working as usually.-) I use Skype and ICQ (QIP) and think Skype is the best nowadays - you can type messages and speak with a good quality of voice.
Skype’s down, so click help and go to the website. Go to the ‘Contact Customer Support’ page. Try to fill out all the required areas of the form to ask them what the problem is (this was last night, and the Announcements page reckoned everything was okay…) Bet you can’t do it! The box that you’re meant to type ‘Problem description or question’ into can’t be typed into! It’s a graphic, not a field. And it’s mandatory that you fill it out… Great programming, guys! HTML? RTFM!!! And the current outage is caused by - a software problem, you say!?
Skype down in Greece also
don’t download skype fixs they are FAKE!
just wait the official Skype anoucments
http://www.vls.gr/index.php
@rajkumar india: thanks for reporting in from India!
@Crimsonkittie: yes, I’ve noticed the service “appear” to be going up and down. Still unable to actually confirm a message receipt with anyone.
@Jennifer: I’ve heard good things about the Polycom - this really is becoming a business hinderance for many.
@Cami: thanks for the Mexico update.
@eddy: sorry to hear Argentina is hit as well.
@Inca: thanks for the Latvia report!
@Platinum3: yes, it will be very interesting to see Skype’s explanation of this prolonged outage once the dust settles. I’m pleased to see that they are trying to dispell myths on their blog, so we will see.
@Fotia - thanks for the update in Greece! And yes, don’t update things when you can’t verify the source!
Hi
I have current skype and older skype both on m$xp with the latest updates and cannot connect. I dug out an old XP machine without the latest XP update (It’s set to manual update) and lo and behold, it connects to skype! It looks like Jack Weller (above) was right and that the latest XP patches are to blame. I can’t say I’m surprised
@Simon: that may be the case, but I don’t think it’s a fair comparison to the spot we were at yesterday vs. today. Many people are reporting that they are back up now, so it may just be coincidence.
Thanks for the info, I was wondering if it was just me.
Still out on the Eastern Seaboard. Just talked to my friend in Lake Tahoe California and he is still out. Also talked to a buddy in Tucson Arizona and he is also out.
@Simon: I haven’t updated my XP machine for quite sometime, as XP is an old OS, I believe that most patches don’t do any good anyway & I haven’t been able to log onto skype yep, well it comes as goes (it’s not stable yet).
IL, USA user
@sonny: happy to help, thanks for reading!
@kev: well put (although you should definitely update your XP patches!), things do seem up and down on Skype.
@runs with dogs - yes, I’m hearing similar reports. Thanks for giving us some locations!
@brian: I remember every 6 months to a year to go to windows update, but it’s not really high on my list to have MS scan my PC, I know a person thats still on SP1 & he’s never had a problem.
@Alastair: Skype admins probably wish it was a DOS attack, but i think it was a little more serious than that, I think ebay is trying to assimilate skype & screwed something up in the process.
Things appear to have stabilized here in New York … Its been up and running now for 2 solid hours. I think its fixed … or getting there for everyone .. so if you are still down be patient … I know Skype must be just as frustrated as we are. As far as the Microsoft updates go, I know it had nothing to do with things as far as my system is concerned I hadn’t done them yet lol.
Thanks for putting this blog notice up for us Brian. It was a nice place to come and check on things to feel like we weren’t all alone in this.
@crimsonkittie: glad to hear. Thought that this blog post and subsequent updates was a good idea at the time. It is nice to build a sense of community into a blog - thanks for helping keep the discussion going!
@Simon: We’re running Skype on Intel Macs - wouldn’t log in under Windows XP or Mac OS X. Seems to be working, finally, now - 10am Eastern Australian time…
@kev: although your friend didn’t have any problems, you shouldn’t rely on this as a safe way to operate. Microsoft releases patches on a regular basis. People that do not upgrade are very vulnerable to malicious people on the web.
Right
Jack…
I like the way you have layed it down in this post thanks….
ooyes