On Mon, 27 Jun 2005, Brett Glass wrote:
4. Encourage Microsoft to modify Windows Update so that it can "discover" a
server on which updates are preloaded or cached. Currently, SUS and WUS
require modification to a client machine's registry; this is practical for
organizations with IT staffs but not for ISPs. An ISP should be able to run a
Web cache, FTP server, or Web server to which Windows updates are downloaded
once and then distributed downstream. Microsoft has a financial incentive to
do this, because its updates are currently distributed through Akamai (which
undoubtedly charges it by the bit for downloads). Alas, we can't hold our
breath waiting for Microsoft to do such a thing. Therefore, the modifications
to Squid mentioned above are essential to providing an efficient solution --
not only to Windows Update issues but also to issues with similar updating
systems from Intuit and other software vendors.
Not that this solves the general problem, but for your specific case, have
you approached Akamai to request they put one of their caches in your
facility? Looking at this
<http://www.akamai.com/en/html/partners/akamai_accelerated_network_program.html>
It looks like it shouldn't be too hard to get them to do that.
The first three of these items should be implemented as soon as possible, so
that administrators of Squid caches can safely cache Microsoft's updates. Now
that the largest of these have grown to more than 700 megabytes, the need is
urgent.
--Brett Glass
--
Success! You are foaf http://openid.enslaves.us/
