North American Network Operators Group
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RE: Microsoft's Black Tuesday bandwidth impact?

  • From: Gadi Evron
  • Date: Thu Jan 10 10:53:41 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: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Frank Bulk
Sent: Wednesday, January 09, 2008 2:48 PM
To: [email protected]
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