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posted by takyon on Tuesday August 04 2015, @07:50PM   Printer-friendly
from the embrace-extend-share dept.

Microsoft will use its customers' upload bandwidth to deliver Windows 10's updates and apps with a peer-to-peer technology resembling BitTorrent, a fact that has caught some by surprise.

Baked into Windows 10 is a new technology Microsoft dubbed "Windows Update Delivery Optimization" (WUDO) that is turned on by default for all editions of Windows 10. However, only some SKUs (stock-keeping units) -- notably Windows 10 Home and Windows 10 Pro -- are set to provide updates and apps to other devices when connected to the public Internet.

Windows 10 Enterprise and Windows 10 Education, volume-licensed SKUs for large companies and organizations, also have WUDO enabled, but default to sharing updates and apps only within a local network.

WUDO resembles BitTorrent in its basics, and like that file-sharing technology, uses a peer-to-peer delivery system to spread the load to PCs worldwide rather than relying on a centralized-servers model.

If WUDO is enabled, Microsoft can point others to locally-cached copies of updates and apps on users' Windows 10 devices that are connected to the Internet. When that happens, a user's Windows 10 PC acts as a substitute server for others, and any customer whose device is tapped for WUDO delivery has given Microsoft access to their upload bandwidth.


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:37PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:37PM (#218151)

    I though it explained it enough; I thought it meant that some of the differing licenses in their product lines had the behavior by default, and then they list two of those products, but not the SKUs directly.

    It is somewhat of a legacy term, predating distribution... but not really with an updated term, so perhaps old is better than legacy. The SKU can be an asset indicator in a spreadsheet that is never printed for products that exist intangibly -- until someone boxes them up with a USB key or DVD as install media -- the idea still works, and the SKU for USB and DVD versions would also differ even if providing the same product to install.

    Those stickers with numbers on them on your six pack of underpants from K-Mart--or stickers applied to products that have a number but no price -- those are usually sku stickers.

    The cash register folks then ring up the price of the sale by entering in those numbers. People have gone to jail for swapping skus to get a cheaper price, so it's a pretty well known concept.