My first thought was "the counting system is flawed"!Then Matthew Rabinowitz (USA, but living in Germany) told me:
"it looks like a supernode is getting nailed.. (or a bunch of them)... like a DDoS attack ... or something like it."and some minutes later he said
"something happened with a few nodes that tripped and caused a bunch of users trying to find another"Then i entered in a very long discussion with Hudson Barton (USA). We listed the following possibilities:
- A bug in the counter
- An attack on supernodes
- A general attack on the internet
- A major natural or human catastrophe (earthquake, nuclear bomb)
- Skype Staff resetting something in their servers
- Somebody blocking the IP addresses of some of the computers gathering the information from the supernodes
It was a very interesting discussion, while we were both watching the numbers going back to normality after a dip of about 1.000.000!
In fact, putting everything together, there are in our opinion two things left:
- or a DDOS attack or similar
- or Skype resetting something in their (servers / supernodes) systems
Finally, Hudson said (and i was authorized to publish this ;-):
Will we ever know?"So the theory is that at 5pm, as the boys in Estonia were getting ready to go home to their spouses (or whatever) that they reset the count servers before turning out the lights."
12 comments:
No no its something wrong with the servers in africa, we cant connect to skype at all. contacted my isp and the y say there is a huge fault somewhere. Emails also dont work.. However the internet still works.. this is weird. I also tried logging into yahoo, and gizmo but it also doesnt work, think something like a virus may be causeing this or many supernodes are down..
simon / South africa
Just found out that the SAIX network has crashed. Also MTNNS.co.za - the two largest Internet providers in Africa. So maybe thats what has caused this fault. It went down just after lunch,and the problem is still not fixed.
So no skype or email tonight : (
Hey, come on, think a little bit:
about 1 million people left at once!
That is one out of 7 (online) Skypers or 14% of the Skype population!
Africa doesn't represent 14% of the Skype users!
So, no the explanation is elsewhere IMHO!
I was just letting you know, what is happening in Africa. SAIX does not only work in africa it also works in asia. anyway lets hope they fix it quick, i miss skype already..
regards
simon
Not sure if it is related but there was a crash in some DNS servers today that left all .es web sites (www.elpais.es, www.elmundo.es, etc.) unavailable for about two hours.
Who knows....
Here is the link to the story about the .es websites and it has a chart of when it happened, maybe it matches with the one you posted: http://www.elmundo.es/navegante/2006/08/29/tecnologia/1156867527.html
hablas español? ;-)
Hablo Español (castellano) si!
No, although the Spanish DNS crash occured at about the same time, it begun some hours earlier!
And it didn't affect the working of internet: it only made the www."domainnames".es unavailable!
There is no indication whatsoever that the problem affected the operation of Skype itself, but rather only the count tabulation. It's notable that the count is a server-based process, while Skype itself is P2P (with the help of a flexible cloud of supernodes). Only a huge worldwide disruption could take down Skype. This issue with the count hardly qualifies as being even a nuisance. I suppose it would be newsworthy if the count servers (or their clients) had been hacked, but it doesn't seem to impose a threat to Skype.
I agree the failing of the count systems didn't probably affect the users (only some of us who were watching the numbers ;-). I was chatting with several people about the phenomenon and we didn't notice anything diminsihing the quality of the chat. So it indeed wasn't a nuisance!
And you are right: it isn't newsworthy for the press, because it wasn't a nuisance.
But i still think it was newsworthy for the different Skype fanatics! Including probably you, mister Anonymous?
THIS IS A COMMENT I MAKE AFTER THE CRASH OF AUGUST 2008: what we didn't emphasis on August 29, 2006, was that it could be the combined effect of people logging out and another part of the Skype population not being able to access the Skype Servers to log in!
Apparently, Simon, South Africa could have been right! (the first poster here!)
Kept hearing people talk about Voip and IP Telephony. Didn't know what it was but i found the Lloyds Business website and it shed some light. Not as exciting as i though it was gonna be
@Anonymous: well, the Skype VoIP has some feature almost no other one has: it is free from computer to computer!
That is exciting.
And it is quite cheap from computer to landlines and cellular phones all over the world!
Also exciting.
And it has video!
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