Skype Restores Service

A log-in problem that shut many users out of Skype Ltd.'s popular VoIP service for nearly 14 hours appears to be over, but the company said more work remains to be done.

At 3:53 a.m. GMT, Skype seemed to be operating normally, with users in Asia able to log in, view their contact lists, place calls, and send messages. However, there was no official confirmation on Skype's Heartbeat blog that the glitch responsible for the log-in problem had been resolved.

"We're fixing issues in our networking software and monitoring the clients getting online with increased success," the company said in a blog post at 4:00 a.m. GMT.

News of the Skype outage first came at around 2:00 p.m. GMT on Thursday, when the company announced that a "software issue" was preventing users from logging into the VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) service and said the problem was expected to be fixed within 12 to 24 hours. Eight hours later, the company's engineers were still working on the problem.

"The Skype system has not crashed or been victim of a cyber attack," the company said in a post published at 10 p.m. GMT on Thursday.

Skype said the problem was the result of a "deficiency in an algorithm within Skype networking software." The problem was related to the interaction between a Skype client and the rest of Skype's peer-to-peer network, it said.

At 2:15 a.m. GMT on Friday -- 12 hours after the log-in problem emerged -- Skype had still not fixed the problem, but said progress was being made.

"We feel that we are on the right track to bring back services to normal," the company said in a post.

Shortly after that notice was published, some Asian users reported being able to once again log in to Skype.