# I Love That Windows Broke Skype

- Link: https://www.timprobst.com/2007/08/21/i-love-that-windows-broke-skype/
- Published: 2007-08-21T08:29:29-05:00
- Author: Tim Probst

⌊Skype⌉⌊Skype⌉OK, so maybe Microsoft Windows [didn’t really](http://heartbeat.skype.com/2007/08/the_microsoft_connection_explained.html)
break [Skype](http://www.skype.com), but this is a great story. As most of you have
probably already heard, Skype had a huge outage late last week, and the system was
down for about thirty hours. Skype is a P2P network which means it uses resources
from all over the world. It turns out that new patches were released through Windows
Update last Tuesday that required a reboot to finish the installation. When all 
of these millions of computers rebooted at about the same time, and the users tried
to log back in to Skype, the loss of P2P resources and the massive number of log
ins overwhelmed the system. Skype claims to have fixed the bug so hopefully something
like this will not happen again.

I still think Skype is an incredibly useful tool, and it provides a service that
allows individuals and businesses to communicate around the world at a very reasonable
price. I just couldn’t resist the fact the Microsoft’s Windows Update brought one
of the Internet’s most widely used communications systems to its knees.

(via [GigaOM](http://gigaom.com/2007/08/20/skype-tells-us-what-happened/))