Investigating the Root Causes of Skype’s Demise

Investigating the Root Causes of Skype’s Demise

Among the many online messaging applications, Skype ranks highly in popularity. Users of Skype are able to make voice calls using their computers’ microphones. A Skype account can even receive and manage calls from regular landlines. Skype is incredibly popular due to its cheap call rates compared to regular phone calls and the fact that calls between Skype users are free. But there was a period in 2007 when Skype went down due to a system crash on August 16 and 17. Take a look at the reasons for Skype’s shutdown.

Microsoft Windows had a security update applied, which was one of the reasons Skype dropped out of service. Periodically, users of Microsoft Windows will receive standard security updates. The goal of all these upgrades is to make the user’s machine more resistant to the latest online threats.

For Windows security updates to install and take effect, it is necessary to restart the computer. This ensures that the new updates are fully functional after installation. Skype said that there was a flood of users trying to log in and that it appeared like everyone was restarting their computers simultaneously. Understanding what caused Skype to shut down relies heavily on this.

Another reason Skype went down was because of a bug in the program’s programming. Because of this mistake, Skype will automatically close down if there is too much activity. It is unclear what caused the issue, but once it was discovered, efforts were made to fix it so that a similar shutdown wouldn’t happen again.

The debacle that brought down Skype was characterized by the Skype Company as a “deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software.” According to the official description, the algorithm acts as a bridge between the Skype network and the client that each individual user must establish a connection with. It was thought to have occurred within the system for the first time. Some have claimed the business was unprepared to handle this specific kind of mistake.

What led to Skype’s shutdown is just one of several variables. The fact that Skype is being used by more people than in previous years is one of the main issues. Because of this, more individuals are using Skype, which is putting a strain on the available bandwidth. It is theoretically possible that the system went down due to the extremely high demand for Skype services.

How much of a hit is Skype these days? Just around 100 million people across the globe had Skype accounts by the beginning of 2006. There were just over 220 million users globally as of July 2007. Given that there are an average of nine million active Skype users around the clock, the application can easily get overloaded due to the high volume of data transfers and simultaneous activity.

Here is an overview of the factors that led to Skype’s shutdown. Now that the initial issue has been resolved and Skype is accessible to everyone again, the Skype team will be focusing on preventing a recurrence of the incident. But, unless Skype improves their system to manage such high traffic, something new might happen due to the ever-increasing popularity of Skype and the additional activity that is consumed by Skype.