Skype said that the disruption of its service that occurred globally recently had been triggered by a massive rebooting of Windows computers around the world, and that no malicious activities or security issues had been involved.
The high number of restarts, which occurred as the Windows computers rebooted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update, "affected Skype's network resources," according to Skype spokesperson Villu Arak. The reboot unleashed a flood of log-in requests, which--when combined with the lack of existing peer-to-peer network resources because of the rebooting-- "prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact."
IDC research analyst Rebecca Swensen said the outage is a reminder that the service reliability of VoIP telephony is not the same as that achieved by the traditional public switched telephone network (PSTN). "I don't believe there was ever an outage on the PSTN as widespread and as long as the one just experienced by Skype users," Swensen says.
Swensen said she believes small businesses are going to be hesitant to have a VoIP solution such as Skype's as their only telephony service. "It is possible businesses owners might look to a simple landline as an emergency backup if something happens to their VoIP service," Swensen says.
Source: CIO Today, http://www.cio-today.com