Microsoft's Black Tuesday bandwidth impact?

Gadi Evron ge at linuxbox.org
Thu Jan 10 15:48:53 UTC 2008


On Wed, 9 Jan 2008, Stasiniewicz, Adam wrote:
> I think you misunderstand how Automatic Updates work.  The "3 AM" default
> setting simply defines when Windows will install updates.  The actual
> detection and download of updates (including the file that the scan engine
> uses) are not done at 3 AM.
>
> Using default settings, Windows will run an update check every 22-17.6
> hours.  The 20% variance is to help prevent floods from computers booted up
> at the same (for example, a computer lab).  This process will: check to see
> if there is a new update detection file, download an updated list, run a
> scan to see if the computer needs updates, and download needed updates.

On a similar note, anti virus companies add a delta of rand out of 300 
minutes or so, for the same reason--coupled with the need of the net 
connection to not be self-DDoS'd.

I find online game updates to be much more interested, bandwidth-wise, but 
never looked at MS's update as in organizations I was with it was 
controlled by a local centralized server (or 100).

> Microsoft releases updates on Tuesday at 10:00 AM PST (though some months
> they have been a few hours late).  So to monitor the impact of the updates,
> look at the traffic between Tuesday 10:00 AM PST through Wednesday 8:00 AM
> PST.  Note, not all computers will get their updates at this time.  The most
> simplest example are computers that are off.  But also, many people
> disable/modify their Automatic Updates settings, while others will use the
> Windows Update site.
>
> Hope that helps,
> Adam Stasiniewicz
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-nanog at merit.edu [mailto:owner-nanog at merit.edu] On Behalf Of
> Frank Bulk
> Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 2:48 PM
> To: nanog at nanog.org
> Subject: Microsoft's Black Tuesday bandwidth impact?
>
>
> Every month I look at my upstream bandwidth graphs and I see no blip in the
> hours before 3 am on Microsoft's Black Tuesday.  I would think that with the
> thousands of PCs out on our network downloading updates around that time
> that I would see *something*.  I know every Black Tuesday I see my three
> PC's blinking a logon screen.
>
> Are MSFT's monthly updates really a non-event in regards to internet
> bandwidth?
>
> Frank
>



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