Skype stopped working worldwide

Today, December 22, 2010, at about 18.00 Kyiv time, Skype began to malfunction. It turned out that problems with Skype in Ukraine, as well as all over the world, are in no way connected with the work of local Internet providers.

Skype management has confirmed the issue officially, stating: "Some of you are having problems connecting to Skype - we are already working on it. Sorry for the interruption of your calls." At the moment, not only the program itself is not working, but also the official forum.

The project blog says that today's problem is due to an insufficient number of "supernodes" (supernodes) in the network. The Skype network is decentralized and operates on the basis of direct connections between computers and phones. But in order to quickly find connection paths between Skype users, individual network clients act as "supernodes" - a kind of "phone book", thanks to which Skype can quickly find other users and connect them directly. Under normal circumstances, there are plenty of "supernodes" in the Skype network. However, today, due to problems associated with individual versions of Skype (the company does not specify which ones), the number of "supernodes" has drastically decreased - these clients have simply gone offline.

At the moment, Skype engineers are quickly creating many "mega-supernodes" to gradually return the service to full functionality. It will take a few more hours, representatives of Skype said. The company emphasizes that certain features, including video conferencing, may not be available for longer.