A somewhat bizarre, but hopefully useful, reply to the assertion that some governmental body or other had a hand in bringing Skype down today...
I do not want this to turn into a long thread if I can help it, but suffice it to say, the explanation Skype gave for the problems of today make perfect sense to me, and I absolutely do not believe there is any element of government involved in what happened. I thought the Skype blog explanation was pretty good, but in case it helps, here's my own version: Imagine for a moment that every computer running Skype is a person. Some live in large apartment buildings, and some just in houses. These large apartment buildings, and of course the houses too, have addresses. For a house, that's all you need in order to send a mail to the occupant. For an apartment though, the address is not enough. Imagine, though, that there is no way to get more information about exactly where in the apartment building a particular person lives. So I'm a Skype instance, sitting somewhere in a large apartment complex, and I want to call you, and you're also sitting in one of those big buildings. We have a problem: I can't find you, I can only find your building. You can't find me, but only my building too. So we have to contact somebody in a house, who has one nice simple address, and get that person to relay messages between us. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is a Supernode. Supernodes are just Skype instances that help other Skypes connect to each other. So who are the supernodes? Well, translating from my little house/apartment idea back to what's really afoot: The people, or Skypes, that are in the large apartment buildings are the Skypes that are running on machines that are behind routers, which give the machines local IP addresses instead of addresses that are actually on the Internet directly. The people in the houses are the Skypes that are running on machines with "real" Internet IP addresses, i.e., plugged straight into DSL modems and cable boxes without a router inbetween. Those directly-connected Skypes may, for some of the time they are running, become Supernodes. The process is automatic, and there are many many many Supernodes out there at any given time. Or, almost any given time. :-) Today, something happened that caused a lot of the Supernodes to stop doing their Supernode jobs. It may be a bug in the Skype code, or something that can be fixed in data streams - I don't know exactly. The point, though, is that whatever happened caused, again using my example, all the people in the houses to slam their doors and stop hearing cries from the apartment dwellers like, "Helloooo, um, could you please tell me if you know how to reach this guy Bob, and if you do, could you please send this voice packet his way?" The net result, pardon the pun, is that all of us apartment folk suddenly can't find anybody, because nobody we can reach directly is able to listen. So Skype's temporary solution, while trying to rescue all the troubled Supernodes, is to erect Supernodes of their own, nodes that can handle a huge number of requests very quickly. Then Skype, the company, can send out something that says, to all of us occasionally impatient apartment folk, "Ahem, ANYBODY LOOKING FOR HELP CONNECTING TO PEOPLE, HERE'S A LIST OF PEOPLE IN HOUSES THAT HAVE OPEN DOORS NOW: ..." But of course, getting massive servers online and getting the millions of Skypes out there to turn their heads in the right direction can take time to pull off. But they have people working on that, and of course, more people working on the more permanent solution, getting the Supernodes that are usually in great supply, back in great supply. Disclaimer: I wrote all of this based on my understanding of Internet communication protocols, Skype communication mechanisms as described in public forums, and, well, a little bit of my crazy imagination. :-) There is no new information here that has not been published by Skype directly, just a new and admittedly wordy way of saying it all. I hope this is helpful to someone, or at least if not, amusing to a few. On Thu, Dec 23, 2010 at 07:19:08AM +0500, inamuddin wrote: Dear friends acording to skype developers since 16 15 gmt skype is down. further more it says due to many computers shut down it is facing problem and they are working as fast as they can. Friends in my openion, it is highly unlikely that a large number of smart computers shut down at the same time. It is quite posible that c ia or any other security agency in the united states or some where in european country has a hand in it. What ever the reason, I just would like to start a healthy and informative debates on this issue. before you talk on this issue you should read skype developers version carefully. for that purpose go to: http://bit.ly/edtjxB with regards. From Inamuddin/charlsdarwin1. You can contact me via gmail: [email protected] yahoo: [email protected] hotmail: [email protected] aol: [email protected] facebook: www.facebook.com/inamuddin twitter: www.twitter.com/charlsdarwin1 skype: charlsdarwin1 klango id: charlsdarwin mobile: +92-300-2227598 Thanks for posting to the skype english list. to contact skype support wiht any questions regarding your account email [email protected] To access scripts for the latest version of skype go to http://www.dlee.org/skype To access tutorials and other goodies go to http://www.marrie.org/skype/skype.html To contact the list owner send a message to mailto:[email protected] to download a tool to automate the installation of skypewatch go to this link. http://www.hrvojekatic.tk/ and for a searchable archives page go here. http://bit.ly/64Y48 thanks and have a wonderful day. _______________________________________________ Skypeenglish mailing list [email protected] http://emissives.com/mailman/listinfo/skypeenglish_emissives.com -- Doug Lee [email protected] http://www.dlee.org SSB BART Group [email protected] http://www.ssbbartgroup.com "I before E, except after C, or when sounded like A, as in neighbor and weigh, except for when weird foreign concierges seize neither leisure nor science from the height of society." Thanks for posting to the skype english list. to contact skype support wiht any questions regarding your account email [email protected] To access scripts for the latest version of skype go to http://www.dlee.org/skype To access tutorials and other goodies go to http://www.marrie.org/skype/skype.html To contact the list owner send a message to mailto:[email protected] to download a tool to automate the installation of skypewatch go to this link. http://www.hrvojekatic.tk/ and for a searchable archives page go here. http://bit.ly/64Y48 thanks and have a wonderful day. _______________________________________________ Skypeenglish mailing list [email protected] http://emissives.com/mailman/listinfo/skypeenglish_emissives.com
