Skype. Stop It.
by Jeremy on May.23, 2008, under Uncategorized
As you all know, I’m a web developer using PHP, MySQL, and Apache. Port 80 just so happens to be the default port for HTTP connections. What completely baffles me is that Skype will use ports 80 and 443 (HTTP and HTTPS) as alternative ports for incoming connections. By default. So, unless I change this option, if Skype starts before Apache, Apache won’t start.
Thanks Skype. I appreciate this “feature”.
May 24th, 2008 on 1:32 pm
Yep, it took me a while to understand why suddenly apache is misbehaving. This is the kind of thing that makes me swear off certain products for all eternity.
June 2nd, 2008 on 12:42 pm
Actually, what they did was IMO a good decision. From what I’ve read, it uses port 80 to play nicely with firewalls and attempt to make Skype as easy to use as possible. Although I think they should have used the HTTPS port as it’s very very very rare you’ll get someone using HTTPS on their local Apache. Or they should check for things registered to port 80 and automatically prompt for a different port.