FYI: download.microsoft.com problem

Thu Sep 19 16:20:35 UTC 2002

We're seeing bad throughput via http from both IP addresses we resolve for
this host (207.46.235.150 and 207.46.235.162). Connections from three
unrelated AS all with T1 or better are giving throughput in tests with
wget around 28-64Kbps). Each has a unqiue path to MS.

One of our clients reports that from his AT&T cable modem, he gets
1.5Mbps+ for the same file at the same time. Perhaps they're caching the
files? (not sure how comfortable I'd be with my provider caching something
important like an OS update). Our outbound path to MS currently traverses
AT&T fwiw.

A test to ftp.microsoft.com when this was first reported to us last night
yielded closer to 750Kbps peak and slowly climbing when it completed, so
this doesn't look like a congestion issue AFAICT.  Traceroutes to MS look
quite good, no loss and low latency (all under 100ms) as far as they go.

Tests to other sites from all three AS I checked looked significantly
better by a factor of 20-50; I found no evidence of connectivity issues
anywhere I checked except MS.

Copies of the test results and traceroutes were sent to the listed MS
contacts on jared's noc list. No auto-ack or bounces yet....

I made one last test (using IE instead of wget), and things seem slightly
improved, yielding an initial 800kbps that quickly dropped to 300 dropped
steadily to a final 112kbps on a 17MB file. Repeating the wget test also
showed some improvement, but not as much (round robin makes this tough to
accurately guage).

Mike