Skype problems persisting for users even with workaround

Many users of the Skype messaging and VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) service found themselves incommunicado today afterwards the service went down for many users, with the outage in many cases causing the Skype software to crash.

The problem does

The problem does, but, once again raise questions about the wisdom of Microsoft's acquisition. Skype's research depends heavily on peer-to-peer connectivity. This allowed Skype to scale up to handle tens of millions of concurrent users without having to invest in substantial server capacity. On the whole, this as well makes the service vulnerable to problems that a more conventional client/server architecture—as used by Microsoft's own Messenger and Lync services—would be immune to. If large numbers of Skype customers go offline—whether due to mass reboots because of Windows Update or widespread crashes due to client bugs—the entire network can fail.