Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth • Hacker News Board

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#61

Post by LoSboccacc » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 10:47 PM UTC

rhino369 wrote: post #41

cma wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Blizzard have done this for WoW updates forever. MS may run into some liability for inducing data overages depending on how up front they are about it and how badly it bites people.

Iirc windows 10 install asks if you have metered Internet. I bet they turn this off if you click no. But that's speculation. I remember when people thought BitTorrent would revolutionize file hosting. Now people think it's stealing bandwidth.

Default setting is disabled for metered connections. One can also set it up to p2p updates locally but not on internet.

Don't know why ms didn't play it safe and put internet resharing as an opt in...

Oh and I don't remeber but I think you can't set a wired connection as metered.

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#62

Post by RKearney » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 10:49 PM UTC

rohansingh wrote: post #33

eli wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to work out fine for Spotify

With Spotify, the aim was low latency. If you click on a song, it should start playing immediately. There's no such requirement for software updates. Back when the only data center was in Stockholm, the only way to meet latency requirements was P2P. Now that we're a grown-up company we've disabled that and use CDN's instead.

> With Spotify, the aim was low latency. If you click on a song, it should start playing immediately.

That was not their aim at all. Their aim was lowering bandwidth costs by shifting the content delivery costs over to the end users. This was made clear by the fact that when you played a song, it started downloading the song from AWS S3 immediately to minimize latency, then once the P2P sessions fired up, shifted over to that stream instead of their costly S3 one.

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#63

Post by kamekai » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 10:50 PM UTC

rohansingh wrote: post #33

eli wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seemed to work out fine for Spotify

With Spotify, the aim was low latency. If you click on a song, it should start playing immediately. There's no such requirement for software updates. Back when the only data center was in Stockholm, the only way to meet latency requirements was P2P. Now that we're a grown-up company we've disabled that and use CDN's instead.

I had always assumed that the P2P was to help mitigate the cost of data so that the Spotify team could better use their limited (at the time) funds to secure more music contracts. Were operational costs not as drastic as I might be assuming?

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#64

Post by LoSboccacc » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 10:51 PM UTC

analog31 wrote: post #56

corndoge wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the point where you find yourself writing an application whose sole task is to disable intrusive settings in your OS, perhaps you should consider switching to a different OS.

The obstacles are almost comical. Okay, they're completely comical. Only one computer in the house is compatible with Windows 10 anyway, and my 12 year old son is ecstatic about it -- I think just because it's new and he's curious. Also, I was optimistic about it until I read all of the recent stuff. He would never forgive me for switching that computer to Linux. My plan is to do the Windows upgrade, let him play wit…

Kind of working for specific app if wacom, hellish path of sorrow if n-trig (depending on hw version)

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#65

Post by rhino369 » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC

LoSboccacc wrote: post #61

rhino369 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iirc windows 10 install asks if you have metered Internet. I bet they turn this off if you click no. But that's speculation. I remember when people thought BitTorrent would revolutionize file hosting. Now people think it's stealing bandwidth.

Default setting is disabled for metered connections. One can also set it up to p2p updates locally but not on internet. Don't know why ms didn't play it safe and put internet resharing as an opt in... Oh and I don't remeber but I think you can't set a wired connection as metered.

If you cannot set wired as metered then it's bullshit.

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#66

Post by dws » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 10:59 PM UTC

datalist wrote: post #53

datalist wrote: post #34

So it's about how updates are distributed? Would be interesting but the page seems to be down -> http://sitemeer.com/#lauren.vortex.com/archive/001116.html

Thanks to gruez for the archive link. While the approach chosen by Microsoft is not necessarily the "cleanest" I still dont fully agree with the article. She complains about the EU not already hoisting pitchforks for this rather minor issue but at the same time completely ignores that Microsoft already got pitchforked enough by the EU for things Google got easily away with. But her disclaimer that she was consulting…

Lauren's credibility predates Google.

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#67

Post by jchomali » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 11:03 PM UTC

striking wrote: post #3

Now, at first I was thinking this was a relatively sane feature like Apple's Software Update Server (which caches and re-serves updates for your local network)[1]. It's a very useful tool, considering the fact that when iOS 7 came out, it took out my entire high school's network because everyone was downloading it. This isn't transparently helping serve updates to computers on a local network to save bandwidth. It tr…

works in a similar way than most services

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#68

Post by datalist » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 11:09 PM UTC

dws wrote: post #66

datalist wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks to gruez for the archive link. While the approach chosen by Microsoft is not necessarily the "cleanest" I still dont fully agree with the article. She complains about the EU not already hoisting pitchforks for this rather minor issue but at the same time completely ignores that Microsoft already got pitchforked enough by the EU for things Google got easily away with. But her disclaimer that she was consulting…

Lauren's credibility predates Google.

Whether she is or is not biased towards Google does not change the fact though that Microsoft already got its fair share of pitchforking long before Google and for issues Google (and Apple) got (and are still getting) easily away with (vendor lock-in, browsers, default settings and so on).

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#69

Post by chrsstrm » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 11:10 PM UTC

Outside of the outrage over "borrowing" the bandwidth on my WAN connection (which I agree is wrong to have on by default), how much of a help is this feature for distributing updates over the LAN?

For example, I installed and fully updated Win 10 on my Surface. Soon I'll be traveling to the bandwidth-deprived middle of nowhere to visit my family and will likely be updating their systems to 10 while I'm there. If I connect my Surface to their network, will the install and update process on their machine automatically look for my Surface and pull updates from there, rather than spend hours trying to download over a sub 3Mbps connection?

Having "PCs on my local network and PCs on the Internet" on by default is not cool, but allowing "PCs on my local network" could be a huge help for situations like this.

Re: Windows 10 “steals” your bandwidth

#70

Post by cabirum » Sat, Aug 01, 2015, 11:16 PM UTC

I guess this will be downvoted, but still:

- If the p2p feature was opt-in, no-one would have enabled it; but the technology needs most users to have it enabled to operate optimally. And I don't see how it could be done without enabling it by default.

- Since (mostly) everyone has it enabled by default, no peer will have a disproportionate amount of upload traffic.

- It makes sense to download a Service Pack (read: any big update) once and have it sent to all PCs on the LAN automatically.

- It's not enabled on metered connections and won't compete for bandwidth with other apps. It can be switched to operate only within LAN. It can be disabled forever.