Aug 27 2007

Post Calamity Analysis

Category: In The Media — ChrisM @ 11:14 pm

I read an interesting piece of the problems Skype recently encountered. I previously posted about the problems I had signing in, and how it appeared that Microsoft’s release of patches that required PCs to restart was a major cause of the connectivity outages. Anyway, now that a little time has passed, John Naughton, writing for the Guardian Unlimited site, has had the time to write a short, but interesting analysis on the issues, and has summarized the situation, and reactions quite well, IMHO. Check here for the article. One point that other journalists appear to have missed, or at least mis-comprehended is the fact that any system that is not centrally resourced, that is to say relies on Peer To Peer protocols, will always have a weakness, if those peers (that is you, me and our computers) have technical difficulties at the same time. It was refreshing to read the work of someone who appears to know a fair amount, and research his stories properly. Given that this is the Guardian (or at least it’s online presence), it was also good to not see any obvious spelling mistakes littering the page 🙂

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