back to article Skype hangs up on users yet again

Users around the world once again experienced problems using Skype on Tuesday morning. As with seemingly identical problems last month, punters initially experienced frustration signing into the service before later reporting that the VoIP software had crashed on their machine. Skype played down the scope of the problem, …

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  1. Captain TickTock
    Thumb Down

    Small but select band of lusers...

    lucky me

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Small number, my arse.

      Everyone here has been up and down all day. Skype actually had a protection-violation-type meltdown on all our machines here in the UK today. And the Indian office is having problems too. I suspect this is more than just a few users.

  2. martynf1

    Just how widespread is this?

    Skype says it is only impacting a few users. Is this geographic then as everyone I know in this region (Middle East) who uses Skype is reporting problems.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      SKype geography impact

      a few users......this is Manila, none of us in the office can get in, and all contacts in Germany, Dublin and Uk are down....define a small number???

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Mushroom

        re: Define small number

        "small number" = the number of users for whom we couldn't give a flying s**t

        That'd be almost all of them then.

        Remember, if you state it as a percentage, the most you have to deal with is 4 characters, and if you print it in a 4pt font, it truly is a small number!

  3. Happy Hippy

    Ughh

    Any thoughts on an alternative?

    1. Valerion
      Devil

      Only one alternative surely...

      MSN!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Unhappy

        MSN voice - OMG

        Have you ever tried to use voice on MSN. Skype is usable, my experience is that MSN is unusable and getting worse. YMMV

    2. seanj
      Trollface

      Re: Alternative

      I suspect Microsoft would like everyone to use MSN - perhaps it's part of an elaborate ploy....

    3. Vic

      Re: Ughh

      > Any thoughts on an alternative?

      Use something SIP-based.

      Get yourself a SIP account at somewhere like sipgate.co.uk[1][2] and download something like Xlite[4]. Up and running within minutes, and you get a free[3] landline number to boot.

      Vic.

      [1] Disclosure: Sipgate is actually a competitor of mine (I resell SIP services). But I don't want hundreds of people looking for a Skype alternative :-)

      [2] Beware that site, as it tends to use unencrypted HTTP for most stuff. If you use https://secure.sipgate.co.uk instead, all is SSL goodness.

      [3] At the moment. There is no guarantee that they will continue to dish out free numbers. But it's worth it for now.

      [4] Sipgate allow yuo to download this pre-configured with your account info from their site.

      1. Hayden Clark Silver badge

        Ah, but Skype is just so good....

        I've tried using SIP over wobbly connections in far flung places. The result is very crunchy calls with lots of (silent) dropouts. You soon give up on any kind of conversation.

        Skype, however, has adaptive coding, that allows the voice quality to get worse and worse, whilst still maintaining the perception of a connection. Even though you may have a poor call, you can still maintain a conversation as you can here if you've missed a bit.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Thumb Up

          Codecs?

          There are perfectly fine, open source, adaptive codecs out there. Speex is one. Works perfectly fine with asterisk.

        2. Vic

          Ah, but Skype isn't working.

          > I've tried using SIP over wobbly connections in far flung places.

          As have I.

          > The result is very crunchy calls with lots of (silent) dropouts.

          Not for me, it isn't.

          > Skype, however, has adaptive coding

          SIP has the ability to use whichever codecs you want, as long as each endpoint agrees to use it. With transcoding proxies, you can often use whichever codec you ilke.

          And you can change mid-call by way of the SIP Reinvite command. Any halfway-decent setup will do this as the error rate increases. One can only guess at why your trials apparently could not do this.

          In short - if Skype can get a call through, SIP can get a call through.

          Vic.

    4. Disco-Legend-Zeke

      YAHOO! VIDEO! CALL!

      maybe?

  4. mrfill
    Linux

    Penguins safe

    Good job the 'automated process' wasn't ported to Linux. Got back up and running in a few minutes. The 'small but select band' may not be so small - 90 minutes after meltdown there's still only 2.5m online instead of the usual 25m.

  5. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge
    Facepalm

    Skype outage

    Pretoria, South Africa.

    On both Linux and Windows.

    Bah, humbug.

  6. Jess

    IMO.IM is out too

    I was unable to connect, so I tried real Skype couldn't either.

  7. This post has been deleted by its author

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Holmes

    Deliberate attack ?

    What do you think Watson ?

  9. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "A small number of you"

    Of course it's a small number, it's always a small number.

    Even if it concerns 10 million people, it's a small number since Skype has hundreds of millions of subscribers.

    That's the beauty of a large customer base : you can piss off millions at a time and keep saying that it's marginal with a straight face.

  10. Chris Priest
    FAIL

    Only

    980,000 at the moment, I've managed to reconnect, but for how long, who knows!

  11. Woodgie
    FAIL

    Every single one of our clients in the UK

    My wife's company and my friend's company. Also some users I know in continental Europe and South Africa.

    Not that EVERY problem is necessarily related to the current issue bit I think it's quite widespread.

    "Microsoft buys Skype and it all goes tits-up". Truth is it may have nothing to do with Microsoft at all, but it's what we're all thinking, isn't it?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Any thoughts on an alternative?

    Storming Microsoft HQ armed with pitchforks and burning torches and throwing the mad Dr Ballmer out of a window?

    It's not an alternative but it sure would make a lot of people happy.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And Mr Gates

      I always wondered how many people swore his name, and how it was that some nutter hadn't topped him (maybe US postmen don't use MS software?)

      Oh, except in that excellent scene in South Park the Movie of course :)

  13. Philip Lewis
    FAIL

    Oh frabjous joy

    Yep, blew me away in the middle of an imporatnt conversation. Bummer ...

  14. Charles Smith
    Mushroom

    90% or more Skype users offline.

    Compared to their usual number of signed in users Skype currently has more than 90% offline. Skype PR people call this "a small number of users".....

  15. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
    Coat

    Blue Skype of Denial?

    Ok, I'm outta here

  16. Hayden Clark Silver badge
    FAIL

    Takes the machine out

    My WinXP machine becomes unusable as soon as Skype crashes. It won't even shut down!

  17. Levente Szileszky

    Skype is a nice fit for bigPOS...

    ...with all these outages - they both "feature" several system-wide outages every year, to keep their customers pulse in the healthy range.

    Money well spent, Mr Gates, money well spent, MS.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Any idea on how someone is supposed to receive the automatic update...

    ...when Skype refuses to run without crashing?

    Hopeless!

  19. Pypes
    Meh

    Seriously looking for an alternative now

    Im getting pretty f***ing fed up of sky now, in adition to the now frequent downtime in recent weeks Ive had my account blocked and unblocked several times, been hacked(*) and had charges deducted from my paypal account and had software pushed to my desktop despite declining them permission to do so.

    God knows how they ever thought they could corner the buisness VoIP market, their free service isn't even currently fit for purpose.

    MY current go-to skype alternative for IP-to-POTS is magic-jacks dongle-free client, but this is pretty much US only.

    *By "hacked" I mean I had apparently brought some credit and a call package to Jordan, which I promptly charged back through paypal.

    Their support team refused to deviate from the script on this one so I got very few answers. But considering my account wasn't particularly badly abused (i.e. used to call premium rate numbers for hours on end) and that skype seems to have been having a curious issue of late where people can log into the forums using other peoples user-names, apparently at random, I am very much of the opinion that this was a fuck-up on their part.

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Your fault?

    "*By "hacked" I mean I had apparently brought some credit and a call package to Jordan, which I promptly charged back through paypal."

    In all honesty more likely your issue - i.e. use a more secure password with Skype / Paypal or make sure your computer is not infected (keylogger etc.).

    1. Pypes

      Trust me

      My passwords are very secure and I've virus / rootkit free.

  21. Happy Hippy

    Alternative...

    Thanks Vic for the advice.

    During the outage decided to buy a gsm gateway and a voice/data modem. Didn't relaise how much I was spending on skypeout. I'll probably stick with them for lanline voip - until the next blackout....

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Contacts list

    Is very very slow to repopulate - still waiting for guys sitting near me to reappear, and I know they are online with their own lists repopulating slowly too.

  23. Levente Szileszky

    Try Google Voice or...

    ...any other VoIP provider, they al lseem to be working fine nowadays.

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