Anyone else having them? It was playing up a bit at work today, and now at home neither my son on the PC or myself on my work laptop are having any luck. We just get that spinning symbol in the system tray (or whatever it's called in the bottom right hand corner) and no contacts shown as online.
We're both using skype 5.0, if that makes any difference.
EDIT: just to clarify, it opens up ok, but it appears that it can't connect with the outside world.
Last edited by: Focus on Wed 22 Dec 10 at 19:33
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Yes.
I got a message saying it was off-line, so I closed it and on re-opening it's as described.
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>> Yes.
>>
>> I got a message saying it was off-line, so I closed it and on re-opening
>> it's as described.
Thanks tom - as long as it's not just us :)
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Cannot Login fm my phone either. It looks down.
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It's not those Wikileaks supporters again is it?
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Is Google Talk an alternative?
I don't understand what it does very well.
www.google.com/talk/
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>> Is Google Talk an alternative?
Possibly for personal use, but skype is the official thing we use at work (we regularly work from home).
Last edited by: Focus on Wed 22 Dec 10 at 22:58
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As an Apple user try Ichat which you should already have on your machine
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I am surprised anyone's employer assumes Skype is a good communication mechanism. Can you not use something that relies on internal systems. Skype is peer to peer still isn't it too?
Our mobile phones are moving from one company to another soon. Mobile to mobile is currently free. So the new deal must be a little better. Coverage might be more of an issue though.
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>> I am surprised anyone's employer assumes Skype is a good communication mechanism. Can you not
>> use something that relies on internal systems.
I've found to skype to be a good communication mechanism, not that I use it a great deal. Obviously it's not as good as face-to-face, but that's one of the drawbacks of allowing working from home. In what way do you think it isn't - you mean call quality, general reliability. or something else?
In terms of down time, Skype has been considerably more reliable than our internal network!
I think there might be a more up-market service used for conference calls in meeting rooms with dedicated equipment.
>> Skype is peer to peer still isn't it too?
Pass. Is that a bad thing?
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Yes in my opinion because it relies on supernodes. And most peoples systems are behind NAT'd addresses.
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>> And most peoples systems are behind NAT'd addresses.
I hope you don't expect me to know what that means :)
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>> >> And most peoples systems are behind NAT'd addresses.
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>> I hope you don't expect me to know what that means :)
>>
Rattoo and rtj think this is a forum for computer geeks, with rootkits hiding behind gNATs running wild, ready to destroy any PC - bar iffy's MAC - that they encounter. :-)
KISS
Last edited by: John H on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 10:01
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>> Rattoo and rtj think this is a forum for computer geeks
To be fair to rtj, he knows I'm a software engineer, and I was writing 6502 assembler 30 years ago. So I probably quailify - just don't ask me about networky-type stuff :)
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...As an Apple user try Ichat which you should already have on your machine...
I could, but that presupposes I've got some iFriends who are prepared to iTalk to me. :)
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Has anyone with an iPhone or Mac tried Facetime? I heard it had some major security flaws in it. I don't know anyone else with a Mac or iPhone I'd want to chat to with video though ;-)
Focus, NAT by the way is network address translation - most of our home computers do not have a public IP address (that's on the router) so NAT lets the private addresses share the public one. Then complicated things like Universal Plug and Play try and let things still get traffic back in by talking to the router. But Peer to Peer networks tend not to work well with NAT. Hence why you have to forward the port for BitTorrent to your client to get decent speed downloads. Skype obviously does work with NAT.
Sorry for being techie - but if your home computer was a Skype supernode then it helps route other peoples calls. And in the past, problems with supernodes brought down Skype - it might have again.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 11:01
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>> Focus, NAT by the way is network address translation
Thanks for the explanation.
>> Sorry for being techie
No probs - apologies for not knowing about things I should really know about.
>> but if your home computer was a Skype supernode then
>> it helps route other peoples calls.
Would I know if it was?
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BTW my skype icon at the bottom of the screen is still spinning - it's not happy
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I think you could become a supernode with Skype if you have a public IP address on the computer. So computers at say a University are more likely to be directly connected to the Internet. It's possible to turn it off though.
Skype relies on supernodes and it is looking like it is a supernode failure that caused the outage. When machines are behind a shared NAT address and try calling another machine which is also behind a NAT address then unless the Skype client can reconfigure the firewall, how it works is the call gets sent to a supernode and the other client gets told there is a call for it by the supernode. The call is then relayed via the supernode. Same happens for fire transfers.
If the Skype client can contact another person's computer directly, it does not rely so heavily on supernodes. But without any supernodes, Skype does not work.
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>> Skype relies on supernodes and it is looking like it is a supernode failure that
>> caused the outage.
But something must have changed - I guess it's either the new v5.0 or (less likely) some sort of external attack.
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I was signed in to Skype on the Mac (but couldn't connect on Windows) so that idea seemed possible. Signed out on the Mac and signed in again but the account is now offline. I tested it before I logged out by calling a landline.
Skype do admit it is supernode related - I wonder if some have been taken offline with the v5 upgrade. Or even because Skype is dependent on computers being online that do not belong to them, they are finding they are mostly turned off even.
To base ones business model on having normal users providing part of the infrastructure the service relies on might not have been such a good idea. Remember the person who created Skype was behind Kazaa.
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 13:50
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Skype is apparently connected and will take text messages now, but test calls to the echo service fail.
Attempted voice calls fail - but shows green connected icon.
Last edited by: pmh on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 07:48
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I recommend VOIPCheap. It only lacks the video calling of Skype, but has more options for calling.
Computer to computer, computer to 'phone, a pre-fix dial number and 'phone to 'phone. With the 'phone to 'phone there is a call set up charge of 5 centimos
Many 'phone locations are free to call - for instance the' phone to 'phone from Spain to the U.K. is 5 centimos to set up, but the call is free. A call to a UK or a German mobile , 'phone to 'phone, is 5 centimos to set up and only 10 centimos a minute.
The 'phone to 'phone is initiated the same way as Jajah. Once your own numbers are registered wih VOIPCheap, you call the number you require from your PC. Your own chosen 'phone rings; you answer it and that then initiates the call to the number you are 'phoning
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Now this is serious question,.
I get free international telephone calls as part of my broadband phone package - The other end does not even need a computer. I can send emails and attachments from computer to computer.
remind me, exactly, why do I need skype?
Last edited by: Zero on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 15:45
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>> remind me, exactly, why do I need skype?
You mean as a personal user, or as a business user, or both?
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both
Certainly with business, I cant see it.
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>> Certainly with business, I cant see it.
We all have company phones as well as skype, but usually use the latter. I think that's because, off the top of my head:
- we all have PC headsets, but few of us have phone headsets (or whatever the equivalent is). Working on your laptop while chatting is a lot easier with 2 hands.
- we often prefer to type rather than talk - less intrusive, and easier for colleagues in our Chinese office in that it gives them time to understand what we have said and type a response.
- conference calls - is that commonly available on phone services?
- it's useful to be able to see everyone's status ie. who's there and who isn't
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Well yes i see all that, and indeed have used it, but we used proper software to do it, showing live documents being updated, chalkboarding - all sorts of stuff way beyond the scope of skype.
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>> Well yes i see all that, and indeed have used it, but we used proper
>> software to do it
Homegrown?
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Nah
things like windows live meeting, lotus sametime, etc
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We use Windows Live Meeting and Office Communicator too Z so that handles the display of everyone's status and the chat element. For audio conference calls we use BT Conferencing. We are currently switching mobile phone provider, but company mobile to company mobile is currently free and likely to continue. Most of our offices use Cisco VOIP phones but then we have a very fast network backbone.
I am surprised Focus' employer relies on Skype which is a peer-to-peer solution that relies on machines outside your control (and Skype too for that matter).
Last edited by: rtj70 on Thu 23 Dec 10 at 17:30
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>> I am surprised Focus' employer relies on Skype which is a peer-to-peer solution that relies
>> on machines outside your control (and Skype too for that matter).
I wouldn't say we rely on it - it's usually just used in preference to phones/email, and I'm not sure whether many people here even noticed the recent skype problems. I only became aware of them when my son mentioned that he couldn't chat to his friends.
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I've tried Skype a few times - although not recently - and have always found the call quality dreadful.
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According to figures in this:
www.theregister.co.uk/2010/12/29/skype_explains_outage/
Along with an explanation of why we should never rely on Skype (they do not control the systems it relies on for one), at least 12.5% of Windows systems running Skype operate as super-nodes and therefore help route all the traffic.
Now someone on another thread wondered what was using bandwidth in the background. Could it have been Skype? :-)
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>> Now someone on another thread wondered what was using bandwidth in the background. Could it
>> have been Skype? :-)
That was me as well!
I suspected skype might have been at least partly responsible, but the 'leakage' didn't seemed to depend on whether skype was running or not. Never did get to the bottom of it (it was when I was using a Vodafone PAYG broadband dongle with a 3Gb data limit).
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Define when Skype was running.... vs. when you used it. Skype supernodes are using bandwidth all the time.
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If you allow it to, Skype will initiate at startup. While this makes for rapid access, it means you would be a candidate for being a super node. It also remains running when you end a session, minimising to the system tray, unless you explicitly cancel it. I always stop programs like this from starting at startup, as I rarely use them anyway so they would always be an overhead, albeit small, and you can never be sure what they are doing when apparently idle.
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When I say 'not running', I mean either not started up (it's not automatic) or exited from the system tray right-click menu.
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"Software bug and server overloads blamed"
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12092795
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skype problems? - bathtub tom
