August 17, 2007

Skype fails for a day

More than 220 million users of Skype were left with no service for most Thursday. This meant that many people including businesses had to return to the landline to make calls for business and to contact family and friends.

This highlights the problems that can affect so many different aspects of life as we reply more and more on the Internet to run our businesses and everyday lives.

Skype is used to make calls over the Internet to other Skype users for free and to landlines around the world at greatly reduced prices.

There was an error in the software that every user had downloaded, however this had remained dormant, when suddenly and unexpectedly the error came alive and crashed the system. There has been a suggestion that the Internet itself could be partly responsible as it is well know that there are some serious problems that exist within the backbone of the Internet.

Naturally there are some conspiracy theories too, which is only expected when something of this magnitude occurs.

Source [NY Times]