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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: 2) by tynin on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:43PM

    by tynin (2013) on Tuesday August 04 2015, @09:43PM (#218158) Journal

    I think the best option is to only have it utilized over the LAN. Fetch once and the whole local network gets a copy without having to go back upstream. This would largely solve the problem of needing to redownload numerous patches when one of your computers gets reinstalled, as another local one would be at the latest patch release and could provide the entire lot. Seems like a pretty huge win for convenience and keeping ISP facing bandwidth usage to a minimum.

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