Skype supernodes crash and inspire patent suit

Right before the holiday break, Skype suffered a huge crash that left its users without their beloved VoIP service for a number of hours. The crash started in the morning on December 22 and resulted from an older version of the Skype for Windows app. It brought down around 30 percent of Skype's supernodes which in turn spiked the traffic on the remaining supernodes--crashing those too.

The crash left about 10 million regular users without calls during the peak use hours. Eventually Skype was able to deploy "meganodes" and use resources devoted to the new Group Video Calling feature to prop back up voice calls. The result meant that the video calls were unavailable for an additional day. Apparently, the whole debacle could have been prevented if people just upgraded their software regularly. The company is looking at ways to improve upgrades.

With all the talk of supernodes, it came to light that a company known as Gradient Enterprises has filed a lawsuit against Skype for its infringement of the company's patent pertaining to "detecting, reporting and responding to network node-level occurrences on a network-wide level." While some have labelled Gradient as a patent troll, others have noted that the company's founder is a systems engineer and inventor and might actually have an earnest claim.

For more:
- read the TechCrunch article
- read the blog post about Gradient

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