Zoom Partial Outages(status.zoom.us)
status.zoom.us
Zoom Partial Outages
https://status.zoom.us/
177 comments
Originally the Zoom site listed meetings and webinars as operational during the time the outage was happening. Now they are listed as 'Partial Outage.' I would have thought something like an outage is detected automatically and the status page updated automatically.
And the error message is strange:
>There is no accout for zuora account id:2c92a00d6ff0e970016ffbde74ae767c (3,201)
It seems that everyone having issues is seeing the same error.
And the error message is strange:
>There is no accout for zuora account id:2c92a00d6ff0e970016ffbde74ae767c (3,201)
It seems that everyone having issues is seeing the same error.
Building a status page is usually an endeavour taken upon when it is a business requirement, e.g. you have clients with whom you have signed an SLA with.
Unfortunately this provides a perverse incentive to NOT report an outage, as even a small outage would be a contract breach for a "many nines" SLA, whereas many small breaches added up over a month could also breach a contract for (relatively) smaller companies. If the client doesn't notice, then it doesn't count.
Anecdotally, the only status pages I've seen that update automatically have no monetary incentive to maintain the page.
Unfortunately this provides a perverse incentive to NOT report an outage, as even a small outage would be a contract breach for a "many nines" SLA, whereas many small breaches added up over a month could also breach a contract for (relatively) smaller companies. If the client doesn't notice, then it doesn't count.
Anecdotally, the only status pages I've seen that update automatically have no monetary incentive to maintain the page.
"even a small outage would be a contract breach for a "many nines" SLA"
Ain't that the truth !
I remember working with organisations that had Verizon leased lines.
100% SLA the Verizon sales reps would say, normally accompanied with a sheet of paper that said "100% SLA" in big bold letters.
Of course the line would go down. Some manager would the come to my desk, thumping his fist and talking about the 100% SLA. I'd say "sure, but did you read the small print".
In all my years, I don't think I ever saw anyone get a SLA payment from Verizon.
Ain't that the truth !
I remember working with organisations that had Verizon leased lines.
100% SLA the Verizon sales reps would say, normally accompanied with a sheet of paper that said "100% SLA" in big bold letters.
Of course the line would go down. Some manager would the come to my desk, thumping his fist and talking about the 100% SLA. I'd say "sure, but did you read the small print".
In all my years, I don't think I ever saw anyone get a SLA payment from Verizon.
In all my years, I don't think I ever saw anyone get a SLA payment from Verizon.
If you're just getting a phone number and a few extensions from them for small office telephony, no. If you're leasing multiple high-availability DIA circuits from them, far easier (but still absurdly difficult). Speaking from first-hand, nightmarish experience dealing with their "VEC".
Don't get me started on trying to get SLA payment when they goof up LNPs either.
If you're just getting a phone number and a few extensions from them for small office telephony, no. If you're leasing multiple high-availability DIA circuits from them, far easier (but still absurdly difficult). Speaking from first-hand, nightmarish experience dealing with their "VEC".
Don't get me started on trying to get SLA payment when they goof up LNPs either.
The one time we got a SLA payment from our internet provider was when a junior tech spliced the wrong optical cable at the junction box in the street and they had their techs on-site to confirm the outage.
https://www.zuora.com
Zuora seems to be a bit like Stripe? Maybe it's their outage, or maybe someone at Zoom forgot to pay the Zuora bill..
Zuora seems to be a bit like Stripe? Maybe it's their outage, or maybe someone at Zoom forgot to pay the Zuora bill..
Zuora has been having issues today (and this weekend past).
https://trust.zuora.com/
https://trust.zuora.com/
They even have a whole Zoom case study! https://www.zuora.com/our-customers/case-studies/zoom/
Looks like another Cisco Webex spin out - like Zoom
It's subscription/billing management, and it doesn't really do payment processing itself, but rather you might configure Zuora with something like Stripe/PayPal/etc.
Gitlab had an outage today related to Zuora going down. My guess is the backends directly call to these APIs and they don't have any form of caching or storing the info from these APIs elsewhere.
Gitlab had an outage today related to Zuora going down. My guess is the backends directly call to these APIs and they don't have any form of caching or storing the info from these APIs elsewhere.
Our school district's entire eLearning plan relies on Zoom for full day live streaming. Basically every teacher of every class live streaming all day. Not sure how many other districts and colleges had similar plans.
K-12?
Are they expecting students to “sit in class” by watching a live zoom lecture?
Are they expecting students to “sit in class” by watching a live zoom lecture?
They were using blackboard last year (ugh)... I think they are switching some to zoom.
There are many districts that expect kids, including early elementary, to sit and stare at screens a majority of the day (with breaks for things like lunch).
Perhaps they're seeing how good kids are at doing that as long as cartoons are on the screen, and extrapolating.
Yes, some schools are planning on this. Breaks for lunch / recess.
Too many schools are taking the approach that our learning wasn't structured enough in the spring, so we are going to the opposite extreme.
It's going to have a negative effect on the children and caregivers.
We have non-technical people on tight deadlines trying to reproduce brick and mortar on a computer screen. It's not going to end well. I feel for them, they are trying their best.
Too many schools are taking the approach that our learning wasn't structured enough in the spring, so we are going to the opposite extreme.
It's going to have a negative effect on the children and caregivers.
We have non-technical people on tight deadlines trying to reproduce brick and mortar on a computer screen. It's not going to end well. I feel for them, they are trying their best.
Both at work and in other professional activities, a number of workshops, team meetings, etc. I've been in, we've all pretty much collectively decided that three to four hours a day is about the most we can productively handle. We've done some combination of just paring back material and smearing things over more days.
Not that professionals necessarily have the greatest attention spans; I've only somewhat joked that I couldn't deal with all-day high school classes today even in-person. But all-day Zoom seems totally undoable for kids.
Not that professionals necessarily have the greatest attention spans; I've only somewhat joked that I couldn't deal with all-day high school classes today even in-person. But all-day Zoom seems totally undoable for kids.
I've had the same conversations and I've been warning my teacher wife that the path they are going down ignores what people in technology have already lived.
The issue though comes down to each school is mandated to have so many school days and hours of instruction for the year. You can't just have a school year of 1 hour days and call it a year.
If they don't actively teach the students for 900+ hours for the school year, they are in violation of the state mandate. Does giving an assignment online with no instruction count as hours? How many hours?
When in doubt, take what you know, which is in person lectures online and reach the mandates. The children will suffer. The teachers will suffer. Administration/Government will meet their mandates.
The issue though comes down to each school is mandated to have so many school days and hours of instruction for the year. You can't just have a school year of 1 hour days and call it a year.
If they don't actively teach the students for 900+ hours for the school year, they are in violation of the state mandate. Does giving an assignment online with no instruction count as hours? How many hours?
When in doubt, take what you know, which is in person lectures online and reach the mandates. The children will suffer. The teachers will suffer. Administration/Government will meet their mandates.
Yes, this is the plan they came up with. It is hybrid so there will be in-class kids and at-home learners all with the same teacher.
Yes, my daughter is doing remote this year, but the majority of students are in class. So she has to watch a live video of the lecture. The district doesn't want to record the videos since they think students won't pay attention. They also periodically take attendance.
If they ultimately watch the videos later, what difference does it make whether they watch it live.
In my opinion, having a lecture recorded is a wonderful boon, as you can go back and rewatch a section if it wasn't clear the first time.
In my opinion, having a lecture recorded is a wonderful boon, as you can go back and rewatch a section if it wasn't clear the first time.
That's a nice theory and makes a lot of sense.
But I don't know about you but I find I very rarely get around to watching things like conference video for sessions I missed live. You end up with a big backlog and it's easier just to ignore the whole thing.
But I don't know about you but I find I very rarely get around to watching things like conference video for sessions I missed live. You end up with a big backlog and it's easier just to ignore the whole thing.
The parent comment was talking about educational lectures, like in classroom settings. When I was in college, online ed was just taking off at my campus, and I took one CS class with online lectures. It was quite useful to be able to go back to a lecture in that situation.
I agree that for traditional meetings/conferences they're not super useful (though I often find myself enjoying presentations from tech conferences long after the conference was held). But that was a different scenario than I was defending.
I agree that for traditional meetings/conferences they're not super useful (though I often find myself enjoying presentations from tech conferences long after the conference was held). But that was a different scenario than I was defending.
The administrators feel the students won't pay enough attention if they can simply watch the video later.
Some are also enforcing dress codes: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/08/us/pajamas-school-springf...
I mean as adults this sounds silly but kids do better with that structure, it's why uniforms "work." I do all sorts of odd stuff as an adult to get into "work mode" and how I dress is part of it. And I do the same thing with pjs, they're a pavlovian trigger that it's time to go to bed.
Getting kids to do the same thing genuinely helps even if it's just "don't wear your bedtime clothes."
Getting kids to do the same thing genuinely helps even if it's just "don't wear your bedtime clothes."
So do many adults...
I'm with you. I need so much structure to be productive, but I also spent the entirety of my formative years in schools that had uniforms and strict time schedules and discipline so I didn't want to make any stronger claims because it's possible that my own experience gets cause/effect reversed.
I've been mostly working remote for long enough that I've pretty much dispensed with all the "props" and formal routines. But I certainly did things like dress for work when I first started working from home semi-regularly. I'd probably recommend anyone use "training wheels" at first.
> I mean as adults this sounds silly but kids do better with that structure, it's why uniforms "work."
It's true that kids do better with structure, but I've not heard that "structure" is the reason for uniforms.
It's true that kids do better with structure, but I've not heard that "structure" is the reason for uniforms.
If they're running their computer with the cameras on, I see no reason why the standard of appropriate dress would be any different in person than it is behind the laptop. Kids often need rules for things that are obvious to adults.
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Yes, which is why we made the hard decision to take our kids out and home school. (The fact that we can even consider this is a luxury?
Not sure how four hours in front of a virtual lecture works for kindergarten, or why it was seen as a viable approach.
Seriously lamenting the lack of innovative thinking around this. What a wasted opportunity to do something truly interesting with education.
Not sure how four hours in front of a virtual lecture works for kindergarten, or why it was seen as a viable approach.
Seriously lamenting the lack of innovative thinking around this. What a wasted opportunity to do something truly interesting with education.
Strike the word virtual and you've just described school. Sure, there are schools that are trying different classroom methods but broadly kindergarten is lectures, worksheets, nap, lunch, and recess. I think your point stands that there's not much innovation in the world of k-12 but I don't think Zoom is what actually matters here.
This stuff is hard, and so many classroom models fail that I'm not surprised that "replicate the one that works" is gaining traction.
This stuff is hard, and so many classroom models fail that I'm not surprised that "replicate the one that works" is gaining traction.
Maybe? The major, MAJOR difference is that if a kindergarten class is in front of a teacher, the teacher can see the class and there are consequences for misbehavior / disobedience and the teacher can manage the class. The teacher has tools for making the kids pay attention that don't really seem possible over a longer-term Zoom meeting.
The kids require supervision by parents on the other end of the call to achieve even close to this (the parents don't have the same "classroom management" skills), so I figure... "Might as well do it myself". That's the main Zoom vs. Kindergarten difference.
The kids require supervision by parents on the other end of the call to achieve even close to this (the parents don't have the same "classroom management" skills), so I figure... "Might as well do it myself". That's the main Zoom vs. Kindergarten difference.
There's another aspect too: when kids are in a classroom together, there's a peer-pressure effect. If all the other kids are listening quietly and doing their worksheets, the remaining children are likely to fall in line (not 100% guaranteed, of course). My observations of Zoom classes with young kids this spring is that this effect did not occur virtually.
Not to mention that home is filled with lots of fun, distracting stuff that the kids otherwise wouldn't have access to during the school day in a classroom.
Not to mention that home is filled with lots of fun, distracting stuff that the kids otherwise wouldn't have access to during the school day in a classroom.
It seems to vary. Our district has our kindergartner in front of a screen for about 2 hours (not continuous). Then they give us activities to do with our kids, at our convenience, that we submit via an app. The teacher reviews and comments on it. There's around 7 per day, but they aren't too difficult for our 5 year old: write 10 T's, read them a book, collect then count some stuff, etc.
Our school is 100% distance learning. When they were going to allow distance learning and in person, they were planning to have completely separate classes for this so they could better optimize for your particular medium.
Our school is 100% distance learning. When they were going to allow distance learning and in person, they were planning to have completely separate classes for this so they could better optimize for your particular medium.
I have a child starting kindergarten. 1/2 the class is attending in person M and Tu and the other 1/2 is via a chrome book and Google Meet. Wed all kids are attending via Google Meet (the classroom will be deep cleaned Wed). And then Th/Fr is like M/T, but the group that was in person is now at home and vice versa. Then they deep clean again on the weekend. (Their day is 6 hrs (less recess and lunch)).
Not only is it going to be challenging for the kindergarten kids to stay focused on their class via chrome book, the SAME teacher is managing the kids in the classroom and the kids online. The kindergarten teachers each have an assistant too (as they did before Covid-19) so that helps a bit.
I am fortunate my wife stays at home with the kids. I can't imagine what it will be like for parents of kindergartners who both work, or parents with special needs kids or parents who don't speak English. I am supportive of social distancing in these times. But its going to be tough on the kids.
Not only is it going to be challenging for the kindergarten kids to stay focused on their class via chrome book, the SAME teacher is managing the kids in the classroom and the kids online. The kindergarten teachers each have an assistant too (as they did before Covid-19) so that helps a bit.
I am fortunate my wife stays at home with the kids. I can't imagine what it will be like for parents of kindergartners who both work, or parents with special needs kids or parents who don't speak English. I am supportive of social distancing in these times. But its going to be tough on the kids.
Similar situation here. We have been unaffected since my wife stays home and has homeschooled our kids for the past couple of years. But, there are a lot of parents in our neighborhood scrambling for a solution (and not seeing Kindergarten Zoom as a workable one) and even asking my wife if their child can join in on our homeschool.
Our school started with 3 hours straight (with 10 minute breaks) infront of the screen for our Kindergartner. That quickly changed. I think families even with a stay at home parent will have an incredibly difficult time keeping a 5 year old online and infront of a screen for a total of 5 hours per day. Even 2 hours straight with a 10 minute break is not easy.
Expecting? Doing. My 2nd grader included. It's going..fair..so far. No substitute for being in class.
Sadly yes. Palo Alto has been doing this for the last couple of weeks (grade 7-12; dunno about younger). 10 minutes between classes; 30 for lunch. I don’t think it’s sustainable.
One improvement: the high schooler has some sessions with 90 kids (!!). So at least they can use their phones to goof off and text each other which they couldn’t do IRL.
There’s no easy answer to this, but I really wonder about the effects of this on kids, especially the younger ones. Kids, even liners, are pretty gregarious by nature, and there’s a lot of important physical contact among the little kids (and, for different reasons, teens :-)). Seems like there will likely be some developments issues down the road.
One improvement: the high schooler has some sessions with 90 kids (!!). So at least they can use their phones to goof off and text each other which they couldn’t do IRL.
There’s no easy answer to this, but I really wonder about the effects of this on kids, especially the younger ones. Kids, even liners, are pretty gregarious by nature, and there’s a lot of important physical contact among the little kids (and, for different reasons, teens :-)). Seems like there will likely be some developments issues down the road.
I'm surprised there hasn't been noise about schools wanting Zoom to reinstate their eye tracking code so the teacher knows when Little Johnny isn't paying attention.
Fwiw, most school districts also already have either MSFT Teams or Google Classroom licenses so switching away from Zoom shouldn't be too problematic for ad hoc lectures.
My district started with Zoom in the spring, then switched to Meet when the Zoom security issues got hot, and ultimately settled on Webex for the fall because it was the most like Zoom, carried enterprise support, and because Meet is still missing far too many necessary features for teachers (breakout rooms, raise hand, etc).
My district started with Zoom in the spring, then switched to Meet when the Zoom security issues got hot, and ultimately settled on Webex for the fall because it was the most like Zoom, carried enterprise support, and because Meet is still missing far too many necessary features for teachers (breakout rooms, raise hand, etc).
Hopefully Google picks up the pace quickly with those important features like the ability to force-mute everyone but the presenter.
I’m really surprised Microsoft wasn’t able to get Breakout rooms working before the fall semester.
Shows December 2020 on here now:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/roadmap?filter...
This showed “coming in fall”: https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/06/20-updates...
This showed “coming in fall”: https://educationblog.microsoft.com/en-us/2020/06/20-updates...
I made a web app to help my wife with our pre-K kids 7 zoom classes, it has made a huge difference and he is able to connect by himself most of the time. I have no idea how non-technical people can cope with this, its still insane but at least manageable.
Say more (school admin considering deploying a custom webapp of the sort for our parents, where links/etc. are more easily laid out and managed for our audience).
That's interesting. My side project, StatusGator, monitors and aggregates status pages and I've been wondering recently if we should target the education... and how to.
We've had a handful of school district customers sign up recently and use us to build aggregated status pages or send notifications to teachers and administrators when Zoom (or Blackboard or whatever) is down. So there seems to be a use case there beyond the "DevOps" market we currently cater to.
We've had a handful of school district customers sign up recently and use us to build aggregated status pages or send notifications to teachers and administrators when Zoom (or Blackboard or whatever) is down. So there seems to be a use case there beyond the "DevOps" market we currently cater to.
For CS teachers working through the outage, https://codingrooms.com/ is providing a virtual classroom for teaching programming that offers conferencing separate to Zoom as a backup
Workaround: if you have the app and manually enter the meeting number and password, it works.
But hyperlinks are not.
But hyperlinks are not.
Cut em some slack, they've been holding the world together with sticky tape for about 9 months now.
I really hope that when the dust settles and they have time to do so, they share lessons learned in the past year.
Well now this would get all the infrastructure guys enraged when they hear that they (Zoom) proudly rely on Oracle's infrastructure, to scale to millions of users [0]
Let's wait until the first person asks if they use 'Kubernetes' yet.
[0] https://www.oracle.com/customers/zoom.html
Let's wait until the first person asks if they use 'Kubernetes' yet.
[0] https://www.oracle.com/customers/zoom.html
They use multiple services including AWS, Oracle, Azure, and their own data center.
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/most-zoom-runs-aw...
https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/most-zoom-runs-aw...
Not to (surprisingly) knock Oracle, but at this point halo cloud customers are "Which provider is willing to cut their own throat on pricing to be able to say they host us?"
If you think it's wise to just rely on one cloud technology as supreme, it is only a matter of time before that lesson teaches itself.
"Already, Zoom is transferring upwards of seven petabytes...through Oracle Cloud Infrastructure servers"
Guessing egress discounts are what drives Zoom's picks for infrastructure.
Guessing egress discounts are what drives Zoom's picks for infrastructure.
They use Oracle as in Oracle Cloud. Not Oracle database.
They talked about it before, must have got a great deal from Oracle trying to push their cloud aggressively against AWS. Zoom is global and multi cloud so it makes sense to get a few more datacenters if they're served on a plate.
They talked about it before, must have got a great deal from Oracle trying to push their cloud aggressively against AWS. Zoom is global and multi cloud so it makes sense to get a few more datacenters if they're served on a plate.
Unfortunately, the same incentives that keep us from both developing or government requiring/legislating that the underlying capabilities, i.e., video/audio conferencing, be interoperable (i.e., you can call people on GoToMeeting/Teams from Zoom, or vice versa); will also likely prevent them from putting out any good information on these events. Video conferencing is yet another example of a monopolist trying to take the whole market.
I realize that the old internet of distributed services and actual competition is likely something those who grew up in the facebook world will not even have a conceptual understanding of, but all of the monopolistic type centralization of services (everyone on Zoom, everyone buying from Amazon, everyone using Uber, everyone getting information through Google, etc.) is immensely dangerous, to a degree that simply cannot be overstated. Its digital, literal monoculture, where one event can have devastating cascading impacts.
In many ways the current virus situation is precisely that, a devastating impact due to a monoculture created and pursued by globalism, where diversity is destroyed and everyone is an equal and controlled human entity. The very crowd that is always demanding "diversity", is also the crowd destroying actual diversity by destroying differences and trying to turn us all into the same, equal thing.
I realize that the old internet of distributed services and actual competition is likely something those who grew up in the facebook world will not even have a conceptual understanding of, but all of the monopolistic type centralization of services (everyone on Zoom, everyone buying from Amazon, everyone using Uber, everyone getting information through Google, etc.) is immensely dangerous, to a degree that simply cannot be overstated. Its digital, literal monoculture, where one event can have devastating cascading impacts.
In many ways the current virus situation is precisely that, a devastating impact due to a monoculture created and pursued by globalism, where diversity is destroyed and everyone is an equal and controlled human entity. The very crowd that is always demanding "diversity", is also the crowd destroying actual diversity by destroying differences and trying to turn us all into the same, equal thing.
Could it be that Zoom is just better, in the existing diversity of meeting tools, that makes more people use it? It offers good support for large rooms, is intuitive to use and all in all, "it just works".
Imagine having that same perspective on telephone or cellular networks - a world where you could only call other people on the same provider network, or tackle some obscure proprietary bridging system if you wanted badly to call beyond that horizon.
Nobody would accept that. Yet for video calling we’ve gone down a path where it’s normalised. Yet the underlying technologies are not so different to those used for traditional audio calling, video codecs and audio codecs and transports for them can mostly be treated the same.
I dunno, I realise this is somewhat of a tangent to your point but I think about it a lot and it bugs me to imagine how it could have been if we went the other way. Feels a bit like how large infrastructure project don’t seem to be possible like they were 40 years ago... something makes it that much less likely that a common good will come into being.
Nobody would accept that. Yet for video calling we’ve gone down a path where it’s normalised. Yet the underlying technologies are not so different to those used for traditional audio calling, video codecs and audio codecs and transports for them can mostly be treated the same.
I dunno, I realise this is somewhat of a tangent to your point but I think about it a lot and it bugs me to imagine how it could have been if we went the other way. Feels a bit like how large infrastructure project don’t seem to be possible like they were 40 years ago... something makes it that much less likely that a common good will come into being.
The difference between the phone provider and Zoom/Hangouts/etc is that all you need to join a zoom call is install an app in about a minute, or follow a browser link and you're ready to go.
People want convenience. Tools are there to serve us for as little effort from our end as possible. Zoom does that. And even for audio calls, people will often prefer private gardens like WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype or whatever to simply avoid the cost of a carrier call because you can't beat free and easy.
People want convenience. Tools are there to serve us for as little effort from our end as possible. Zoom does that. And even for audio calls, people will often prefer private gardens like WhatsApp, FaceTime, Skype or whatever to simply avoid the cost of a carrier call because you can't beat free and easy.
>The very crowd that is always demanding "diversity", is also the crowd destroying actual diversity by destroying differences and trying to turn us all into the same, equal thing.
The rest of your argument makes sense, but this part doesn't.
Not being beaten by police or being verbally abused because of your skin colour is the opposite of 'turn us all into the same, equal thing'
Those peopl just want equal rights. Is it that hard to understand?
The rest of your argument makes sense, but this part doesn't.
Not being beaten by police or being verbally abused because of your skin colour is the opposite of 'turn us all into the same, equal thing'
Those peopl just want equal rights. Is it that hard to understand?
Not because they have the best quality, most secure, or most reliable product, though. So rather than cut them some slack and wait, this is a good opportunity to explore alternatives.
Let's explore. What alternatives are there?
Jitsi, WebEx, Microsoft Teams
Ok, they do have the best product..
I like Jitsi better than Zoom. No install needed. Only thing is that it makes my CPU run hot. Any reason you think Zoom is better?
Can't dial in to Jitsi *(without some additional setup)
Fair enough.
Actually, you can: https://github.com/jitsi/jigasi
Needs some setup, but if you are using Jitsi that seems reasonable
Needs some setup, but if you are using Jitsi that seems reasonable
Google Meet
My university uses Blackboard Collab, its a pretty solid solution imho and apparently integrates nicely into Moodle.
Jitsi running on matrix/riot/element works pretty well IME. Dunno if schools would be able to provide the necessary HW/funding for full day streaming though.
Webex. No temporary unmute. Can’t see myself, why can’t I be a full size panel?
Jisti. Can’t dial in. Utterly useless for anyone with bad internet for this reason.
Jisti. Can’t dial in. Utterly useless for anyone with bad internet for this reason.
> Jisti. Can’t dial in. Utterly useless for anyone with bad internet for this reason.
You can dial in (at least for a call on https://meet.jit.si - I don't about self-hosted instances).
Click the person symbol ('Invite more people') in the bottom-right of the window, and a modal dialog will appear with a phone number and PIN code to enter.
If you click 'more numbers' you will be shown alternative phone numbers for many countries (UK, US, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland).
You can dial in (at least for a call on https://meet.jit.si - I don't about self-hosted instances).
Click the person symbol ('Invite more people') in the bottom-right of the window, and a modal dialog will appear with a phone number and PIN code to enter.
If you click 'more numbers' you will be shown alternative phone numbers for many countries (UK, US, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, Australia, Brazil, Japan, Switzerland).
I prefer Google Meet
I'm actually always surprised how well AWS Chime [0] works. Probably because not too many people use it.
[0]: https://aws.amazon.com/chime
[0]: https://aws.amazon.com/chime
The only person I know who uses Chime works at AWS, and even they hate it.
Large parts of Amazon finally got the go-ahead to use Slack internally instead of Chime.
But at least they're dogfooding – the feature list is really short, but the quality is always good. I also wouldn't want to use it as my only conference tool, but if zoom is down, it makes a good backup.
Skype
I’d argue most reliable for the most people, however. Even if that’s only because many people already have the client installed and are accustomed to it. It’s not completely random that zoom is so popular.
That's debatable. Perhaps not the most secure, but possibly the best quality and most reliable (to this point, at least). Depends how you define quality, but the ease of use and high quality video are perhaps the leading factor in their huge success.
This is something I've seen several say, but I totally don't get. I've been using jitsi, gmeet, slack and zoom for the last six months; and that is my order of preference with zoom dead last. Quality on zoom is definitely the worst.
Jitsi too
Totally understand. I had to use WebEx for a vendor last week... I don’t know how they never managed to improve their product.
One word:
Enterprise
Enterprise
I've had to use WebEx regularly for a few years now and somehow it's gotten even worse over that time.
I don't know if this is the case with WebEx, but in my experience working in enterprise software, a handful of huge corporate clients that generate an outsize percentage of revenue pretty much dictate what gets attention. They're generally more worried about interoperability with their environments and minimizing their own internal training/support expenses than having an optimal product.
For them, something mediocre but gaplessly sufficient is preferable to something being mostly excellent with a few big caveats.
For them, something mediocre but gaplessly sufficient is preferable to something being mostly excellent with a few big caveats.
Not a fan of WebEx.. but Enterprises often have very different requirements that are deal breakers..
For example, it has to run as a on-premise hosted service, or has to tie into an arcane security environment which hasn't been updated in a long time where bandwidth is already an issue.
Imagine running that many copies of custom software in one environment, each with their ideal solution
For example, it has to run as a on-premise hosted service, or has to tie into an arcane security environment which hasn't been updated in a long time where bandwidth is already an issue.
Imagine running that many copies of custom software in one environment, each with their ideal solution
After they stopped selling the on-premises meeting server, WebEx was always hosted, never on-premises.
And a lot of these former WebEx customers have now moved over to Zoom[1]. It’s a relatively easy transition for corporate IT to make.
[1] https://zoom.us/customer/all
And a lot of these former WebEx customers have now moved over to Zoom[1]. It’s a relatively easy transition for corporate IT to make.
[1] https://zoom.us/customer/all
For many, Zoom has moved into the essential area of internet/cell service.
Lots of people are using their paid zoom accounts more than their cell phone during the day and even for work.
Downtime means work is down too - not just for classrooms.
Lots of people are using their paid zoom accounts more than their cell phone during the day and even for work.
Downtime means work is down too - not just for classrooms.
Pretty much the only time I've used my cellphone for work for months was when my power went out for a couple of days because of a storm. (We don't use Zoom--Meet and Bluejeans--but same idea.)
Make sense - working video solutions that we rely on more than our phones for meetings have become that indispensable.
Great to see an attitude other then pitchforks and torches.
When they stop with their dark patterns I'll put away my torch.
What dark patterns?
They go out of their way to get you to install the app, to the point of misrepresenting your options. (most recently you have to click download zoom in order to get a web zoom client link, and deal with cancelling the download).
They lied about and continue to misrepresent their security.
They keep adding and then removing personally invasive features (eg. the linkedin sharer).
There are more: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com...
I don't know why people are so willing to forgive them.
They lied about and continue to misrepresent their security.
They keep adding and then removing personally invasive features (eg. the linkedin sharer).
There are more: https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=site%3Anews.ycombinator.com...
I don't know why people are so willing to forgive them.
When the rest of the whole technology industry, giant corporation after giant corporation, treated video chat as an opportunity for vendor lock-in, service up-sell and competetive wedge...
Zoom just made a tool that could be used by everyone, everywhere, for free. And they saved us.
Yeah, I think that's something to celebrate.
Zoom just made a tool that could be used by everyone, everywhere, for free. And they saved us.
Yeah, I think that's something to celebrate.
I was impressed at how well they were able to scale up when the 'rona hit. I'd still like to know how Zoom specifically rose up so fast, given that it's one of a billion video conferencing tools. Was it because they offered many-to-many video chats of over whatever Skype offers for free? I don't even know what Zoom's business model is.
All other video conferencing solutions suck! Somehow Zoom figured out how to solve feedback/echo elimination, audio latency, video latency, and video quality.
It can't be overstated! They won over with sheer quality. I suffered through evaluating several video conferencing products over a few month period, and Zoom was the only one that worked properly.
The created a product that works, setting themselves apart in a sea of garbage.
It can't be overstated! They won over with sheer quality. I suffered through evaluating several video conferencing products over a few month period, and Zoom was the only one that worked properly.
The created a product that works, setting themselves apart in a sea of garbage.
Totally agree.
Over the past year I've clocked more than 50,000 minutes in Zoom alone, and it is much better than any other I've used.
Over the past year I've clocked more than 50,000 minutes in Zoom alone, and it is much better than any other I've used.
Zoom just did it better.
Using zoom was frictionless, specially pre-Corona Times.
- Keyboard shortcuts for most common tasks (new meeting, copy meeting id)
- Just send a link to invite someone to a meeting (no need to wait for the "e-mail" to arrive, or to download an ics attachment with the meeting details).
- Just click on the link to join a meeting
- Just click share to share screen (no more "can you make me the presenter" conversations)
- Super easy way of asking remote control (no "click to take remote control" message)
- Easy to use audio testing feature
- Meeting ID on top of every meeting so it was easy to see and share (this was been deprecated though, after someone from the Uk gov't published their meeting id on social media)
- Added everyone on your domain name as a contact (this was disabled as a default setting after this happened with an European ISP e-mail addresses)
While competing solutions still required meeting id, meeting password, typing your name and e-mail, "taking the presenter role" before screen sharing, downloading a temporary executable file, showed weird gray boxes during screen sharing.
Other nice features where; Multiplatform Win/Mac/Linux/Browser based, Android, iOS, lots of dial-in phone numbers, even in my third world country (!), also audio/video quality was more stable even with our third world internet.
Did I also mention their executable clients where super responsive.
Using zoom was frictionless, specially pre-Corona Times.
- Keyboard shortcuts for most common tasks (new meeting, copy meeting id)
- Just send a link to invite someone to a meeting (no need to wait for the "e-mail" to arrive, or to download an ics attachment with the meeting details).
- Just click on the link to join a meeting
- Just click share to share screen (no more "can you make me the presenter" conversations)
- Super easy way of asking remote control (no "click to take remote control" message)
- Easy to use audio testing feature
- Meeting ID on top of every meeting so it was easy to see and share (this was been deprecated though, after someone from the Uk gov't published their meeting id on social media)
- Added everyone on your domain name as a contact (this was disabled as a default setting after this happened with an European ISP e-mail addresses)
While competing solutions still required meeting id, meeting password, typing your name and e-mail, "taking the presenter role" before screen sharing, downloading a temporary executable file, showed weird gray boxes during screen sharing.
Other nice features where; Multiplatform Win/Mac/Linux/Browser based, Android, iOS, lots of dial-in phone numbers, even in my third world country (!), also audio/video quality was more stable even with our third world internet.
Did I also mention their executable clients where super responsive.
In the last startup I joined, back in ‘16, they had two things going for them:
We also thought that Zoom had encryption. (Turns out ...). There were very easy screen shares.
The startup I joined is remote-first, though it did not start that way. After I joined from out of state, we just all started doing that. We used Zoom a lot.
In short, I think Zoom got as big as they did because they addressed enough of the pain points in the end user experience.
- It was very easy to get people to get on the same zoom call as everyone else
- It had the best quality for video conferencing.
We also thought that Zoom had encryption. (Turns out ...). There were very easy screen shares.
The startup I joined is remote-first, though it did not start that way. After I joined from out of state, we just all started doing that. We used Zoom a lot.
In short, I think Zoom got as big as they did because they addressed enough of the pain points in the end user experience.
I would also add that Skype blew it. This should have been their market.
Today, I don’t even have skype installed anywhere.
Today, I don’t even have skype installed anywhere.
My wife used to use Skype a lot back in the '00s, particularly for international calls (she actually had setup a paid plan with a dial-in number in Mexico that connected to her and a dial-in number in the US that connected to her mother to make cross-border calls extra easy). I remember using the app on my iPhone to call home from Morocco as if I was making a regular call. Then they had an issue where their iPhone app would run in the background needlessly and such down battery life. Add in T-Mobile offering free international calls and roaming and I can't remember the last time I used Skype. It is still installed on my phone and hasn't been off-migrated so I must have clicked on the icon accidentally sometime in the past year or two.
That's more of a story of Microsoft acquiring and destroying a brand. They took the consumer software and rebranded their enterprise communications suite under it, then rebranded that and now no one "skypes" anyone anymore.
Microsoft originally had a product suite called Lync which had chat and calling. It was pretty good. Then MS rebranded it as "Skype for Business." It was the same infrastructure and program with a facelift to use Skype's styling. That did not work out well, and was rebranded as Microsoft teams.
I'd suspect the whole point of acquiring Skype was to move it to enterprise, which it only did cosmetically and turned out to be a failure. MS Teams is alive and well though.
Microsoft originally had a product suite called Lync which had chat and calling. It was pretty good. Then MS rebranded it as "Skype for Business." It was the same infrastructure and program with a facelift to use Skype's styling. That did not work out well, and was rebranded as Microsoft teams.
I'd suspect the whole point of acquiring Skype was to move it to enterprise, which it only did cosmetically and turned out to be a failure. MS Teams is alive and well though.
> It was very easy to get people to get on the same zoom call as everyone else
This. Zoom had the highest chance of success when you found yourself in the middle of a call and thought « Hey, it would be great if we got Tom on this call » and Tom barely knew how to use a computer.
Getting someone on a WebEx would’ve taken several minutes on software installs alone.
This. Zoom had the highest chance of success when you found yourself in the middle of a call and thought « Hey, it would be great if we got Tom on this call » and Tom barely knew how to use a computer.
Getting someone on a WebEx would’ve taken several minutes on software installs alone.
In 2017, I worked for a company that used Zoom for the sole reason that it was the only similar app not blocked in Oman, Pakistan, etc.
Slack to this day still tells me that it will not work in FF. So it's still crappy
You need a paid account for meetings over 40 minutes with more than two participants. If you're a business or school, you're likely going to want a paid account.
I'm told it's much better than most others. I haven't really noticed a dramatic difference, but that seems to be the consensus.
I'm told it's much better than most others. I haven't really noticed a dramatic difference, but that seems to be the consensus.
The bill, my company pays like $900/yr
Every conference call or presentation or whatever is held up by the stupidest user with the shittiest laptop from their incompetent IT department.
Zoom had the lowest friction, most idiot proof solution while still being decent quality and having enough useful features for classes and meetings, etc.
(as it turned out, some of those low-friction design choices also had some negative security and integrity consequences)
Zoom had the lowest friction, most idiot proof solution while still being decent quality and having enough useful features for classes and meetings, etc.
(as it turned out, some of those low-friction design choices also had some negative security and integrity consequences)
As their largest competitor, I still hold that his is the right attitude. Everyone in this space had to do massive scaleups, and some bumps inevitably happen.
We have identified the issue causing users to be unable to authenticate to the Zoom website (zoom.us) and unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars
Even with a distributed architecture, auth/login flows are often some of the harder problems to horizontally scale without introducing inconsistencies of behavior.
I wish 'em a speedy recovery!
We have identified the issue causing users to be unable to authenticate to the Zoom website (zoom.us) and unable to start and join Zoom Meetings and Webinars
Even with a distributed architecture, auth/login flows are often some of the harder problems to horizontally scale without introducing inconsistencies of behavior.
I wish 'em a speedy recovery!
Who are their largest competitor? Is it Meet or Msft or...?
Cisco Webex
In the Education market probably Google meet and MS Teams.
Not the answer, but if I were a bootstrap-y small company I would be using Discord instead of Slack/Zoom for the cost.
Discord I think raises privacy concerns and in the past, I have had team members complain that it wasn't user friendly BUT I love their tech. They achieve some really impressive stuff
Teams, due to super aggressive bundling with O365. All momentum in the market is between Zoom and Teams.
Cisco blew it.
We're partnering with both, rest is also ran. Massive deals in F500 globally underway. Both also have accelerating roadmaps, visible in the last Zoom update that pre-empted 50% of mmhmm's offering.
As a competitor, do not publish your roadmap, both Zoom and Teams have highly able and agile product teams running them. Super impressive people with a lot of resources.
Cisco blew it.
We're partnering with both, rest is also ran. Massive deals in F500 globally underway. Both also have accelerating roadmaps, visible in the last Zoom update that pre-empted 50% of mmhmm's offering.
As a competitor, do not publish your roadmap, both Zoom and Teams have highly able and agile product teams running them. Super impressive people with a lot of resources.
Teams is interesting in that it sort of overlaps with both Slack and Zoom.
Zoom’s audio & video feels way better though.
Completely agree re Cisco as well: I also have Cisco Jabber and it’s basically terrible at everything — audio, video and especially screen sharing. Dunno what happened there.
Zoom’s audio & video feels way better though.
Completely agree re Cisco as well: I also have Cisco Jabber and it’s basically terrible at everything — audio, video and especially screen sharing. Dunno what happened there.
Well the other day I literally saw a Zoom + Slack anti MS billboard
I know this isn't the right forum, but where does one report bugs to Webex? It never lets me enter a full 7 letter tld in an email address, if you care.
We certainly do care, thanks for bringing this up! You can either report it at the main contact page[1] or within Webex Teams app (Help > Feedback) or Webex Meetings app (Help > Send Problem Report).
[1] https://help.webex.com/contact
[1] https://help.webex.com/contact
Would have been great if you could have simply replied; “Fixed.”
What makes you think you are their largest competitor and not Microsoft?
I'm astounded that this is the first outage I heard about this year.
I can confirm that SSO is broken for many browsers. I had to install the app to get it working.
Later on, i will be making a VM for Zoom explicitly.
Later on, i will be making a VM for Zoom explicitly.
What is "SSO"? Single sign-on?
Yes. That's how you login with Google, LinkedIn or your enterprise account.
Shouldn't universities and other organisations plan for outages like this and prepare an alternative to Zoom for precisely these sorts of occurrences?
Most institutions didn't even plan to go into Zoom, assuming they have some well-thought-out redundancy when they don't even have a well-thought-out primary is misunderstanding how disorganized most institutions are handling this whole situation: Most did nothing over summer to prep.
I made a joke about this earlier in the morning on my team's slack: "I wonder how many systems admins are going to wake up later this week and find Jitsi installations dotted throughout their infra" when the more tech-savvy users try to 'self-service' their video conferencing
Sure. But everyone is already flying by the seat of their pants here. That there isn't a backup video conferencing system set up isn't overwhelmingly surprising to me.
(plus, training out of practise professors on two video conferencing systems? No way that would end well)
(plus, training out of practise professors on two video conferencing systems? No way that would end well)
For many schools, zoom is the backup plan. Covid caused the in-person outage.
This isn't their area of expertise, and asking teachers to migrate to the backup and inform and assist their students to get online during an outage of unknown length isn't reasonable.
Snow days in 2020 will be replaced with Zoom Outage days.
This isn't their area of expertise, and asking teachers to migrate to the backup and inform and assist their students to get online during an outage of unknown length isn't reasonable.
Snow days in 2020 will be replaced with Zoom Outage days.
If Zoom had an outage in early april, that would be legitimate. However it's been 5 months since schools first closed, and we've known for most of that time that this would be a long term issue. Do you really want the person who can't figure out two meeting programs over the course of several months to be responsible for your kid's education?
Looks like all calendar links and direct urls are broke at our org, but we can get in via the app by typing in the meeting id. what a mess!
This is happening to me right now lol. It's funny seeing it on HN.
If you're a bigger university, some kind of fallback plan seems to be the responsible thing to do, but what would that look like? Surely someone's been working towards that for the past months.
Zoom was the fallback plan. There hasn't been enough time and resources to get everything set up with even one monolithic infrastructure provider. Faculty and staff at universities have been working overtime over the summer to adapt in-person classes, learn new systems that keep changing, and get new students' accounts set up and secure, all while doing it at home -- often without childcare.
World largely standardizes on a single company's platform for online meetings. What could go wrong?
[deleted]
Not to mention said company have previously been caught installing malware on people’s computer[1], lied about encryption[2], censored US citizens on behalf of Beijing[3] just to name a few incidents.
And to make matters worse, 99+% of the Zoom meetings could easily take place on Jitsi Meet, Teams, etc.
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/c1truz_/status/124473767293082419...
[2]: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/zoom-meeting-encryption/
[3]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/zoom-cites-chine...
And to make matters worse, 99+% of the Zoom meetings could easily take place on Jitsi Meet, Teams, etc.
[1]: https://mobile.twitter.com/c1truz_/status/124473767293082419...
[2]: https://theintercept.com/2020/03/31/zoom-meeting-encryption/
[3]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/06/zoom-cites-chine...
I had to give an online exam today. Mercifully it was not on Zoom -- I think the stress would have killed me.
There's a workaround available for this issue.
This issue only affects joining Zoom meetings through the web client. If you join using the desktop or mobile client to the meeting ID directly, you should still be able to join a meeting.
This issue only affects joining Zoom meetings through the web client. If you join using the desktop or mobile client to the meeting ID directly, you should still be able to join a meeting.
Does that affect when you click on a link in a meeting invite, it opens on Zoom's site, then opens the app?
This flow (clicking on a link, opening on their website, and opening the app) is what's currently broken. Opening in the app directly bypasses the problem for this reason.
Doesn't do me a lot of good then since I can't run the Zoom application on my only laptop :/ (corporate policy). They've really screwed up here by de-emphasizing the web client in favor of the application.
The problem is that a ton of the people hit with this are students on Chromebooks. Our district standardized on Chromebooks and issued one to every student. Assuming the teacher isn't on a Chromebook this would likely mean about half the class still couldn't get into the meeting.
Has there ever been a video service that hasn't gone down? This really concerns me if this is the future of a remote world.
Not sure FaceTime has had any significant outages as long as I can remember.
Before the whole virus situation started, I had never even heard of Zoom, and now it seems it's everywhere. What happened to Skype? I remember it being the thing I was forced to use during pretty much every client meeting back in the day.
Trends become Buzzwords. The less syllables the better... Mix that with some perfectly timed marketing and heaps of free licenses, and Zoom becomes ubiquitous within a few months.
Syllable tests is folly. I've heard people pronounce it zoo-oom. Welcome to the south where single syllable words do not exist.
Microsoft bought it and gutted it, it has terrible usability now. I think when the pandemic hit the most usable system was bound to get tons of traction quickly, and I guess that happened to be Zoom.
Skype was sidelined because it had a worse user experience then Zoom, which literally "just works".
Hasn't Skype always been limited in how many people you can have in a video conference without paying for it?
Skype has been replaced by Teams.
Skype for Business is being replaced by Teams.
Normal Skype still exists.
The CEO of Zoom spoke at SIGCOMM a couple weeks ago (unfortunately I don't think there will be a recording)
Seems like the crush of schools starting this morning was related to this.
I guess Eternal September came early to Zoom this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
I guess Eternal September came early to Zoom this year.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
It was painful to get them to admit anything was wrong, until I asked if this would impact 9-1-1 calls too, then they admitted an issue with full-digit dialing (aka: 10 digit dialing).
Even units that were resistant to switching from the conference line migrated over.
I wonder how this afternoon will go if this continues.