Skype is experiencing a major outage. My fellow TMC co-workers noticed it late Wednesday when they couldn't IM fellow co-workers. TMC's Dave Rodrqiguez told me that he went home for the day, signed into Skype from home and was bombarded with a ton of Skype IM messages that didn't go through earlier. I checked Skype's home page but no mention there. I headed over the the Skype heartbeat page and found that that there are indeed experiencing an outage that is still happening today (Thursday). Skype claims the outage is due to a software issue. Many TMCers are upset they can't IM their fellow coworkers and their outside clients. Amazing how dependent we're become on Skype for our business.

Some users are able to connect to the Skype network but then are quickly disconnected just minutes later. According to Skype, "We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours." This has to be the longest Skype outage ever.

I'll find out more about the outage and post the details later. Some theories are floating around that the major Microsoft updates (Patch Tuesday) that were released yesterday could have something to do with the Skype outage. My Windows Vista PC had like 6 new patches yesterday. I believe Windows XP also had a ton of patches yesterday as well. Since Skype is a P2P network that relies on other peers for the network to function properly, it's possible a Microsoft update is causing a conflict. [more explanation of this theory in the comments section]

Update:
Andy has some thoughts on the Skype outage. He claims its the login authentication that is failing. Those that are in stay in and those trying to sign in can't get in. I did notice that with some of TMC's Skype clients, however some were able to sign in and then got booted off the Skype network.

Update 2:
I just remembered the relatively short outage that Skype had in 2004 due to a DNS problem. I wrote about it here: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/skype/skype-down.asp.

Update 3: (Monday August 20th)
It would appear the cause of the Skype outage was indeed the Windows Update patches as I had theorized earlier. Lucky guess I suppose. Maybe I should play Lotto this week. Anyway, go read the article for more details.