More on the Skype Outage and its Implications

Like millions of others around the world, I experienced the disappearance (see the previous post) of my normally dependable Skype service.  It was out of order all day yesterday (December 23), but by this morning I was able to log on normally.

The media are full of stories about the Skype outage.  As The New York Times "Bits" column noted, Skype will struggle to restore not only its service, but its reputation.  Skype has announced that its problem was with "supernodes," computers among its network of 124 million users that serve as phone directories and help connect calls.  For unknown reasons, they were taken off line.  Although unknown, Skype did know and announce, according to the BBC, that the fault had been caused by a "software issue" on critical parts of its network.

Skype has announced plans to compensate users for the outage, but the long term impact of this event will be on the dependability of Skype service, especially for business users.  I'd be interested in comments from other Skype users here in Korea about how this event affected them.