Updates for Windows (and Ubuntu, and OSX, and...) from New Zealand servers?

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ahmad

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#18481 11-Jan-2008 21:43

I'm with Xnet. I know that I get free national traffic - not sure about other ISPs.

With the ever increasing size of updates, why is there not an option to download updates locally? Or is there one that I don't know about?

I know at the University of Otago some time back (not sure of current situation), their Macs were able to access local servers to perform System updates (how cool is that!).

chakkaradeep

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#104307 11-Jan-2008 21:49

ahmad:
With the ever increasing size of updates, why is there not an option to download updates locally? Or is there one that I don't know about?

For any Windows product, you have to hit their update servers and there isn't any local server

For Ubuntu, once you choose your timezone which the installer understand that you are from New Zealand, it will add an entry to download from NZ servers, but it wont be default. You have to manually set it, else it will download from main servers.

ahmad:
I know at the University of Otago some time back (not sure of current situation), their Macs were able to access local servers to perform System updates (how cool is that!).

University has a local WSUS server running withing the university. Currently they have support for XP but not for Vista. So, even the department systems running Vista have to download separately from the main microsoft update servers.

Regards,
Chaks

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ahmad

1937 posts

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#104309 11-Jan-2008 21:57

Well with all the talk about "food miles" did anyone care to think about the "data miles"?

It's kinda crazy!

I'm no expert - I presume from your response that it would cost money to decentralise Windows Update?

chakkaradeep

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#104310 11-Jan-2008 22:00

ahmad:

I'm no expert - I presume from your response that it would cost money to decentralise Windows Update?

I really don't know about that

ahmad

1937 posts

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#104316 11-Jan-2008 22:57

Oh I'm just guessing that one reason there aren't local servers is that it would cost more money - but then I don't know if having local servers would cost more money or not. I'm not up to speed with how much servers cost.

ajobbins

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#105677 19-Jan-2008 13:50

Xnet "Local" data is free (I.e. VFX, stuff of VFX network) but National data is charged. I believe I read somewhere tho (Maybe on here?) that Xnet are installing some kind of server that is like a cache for lots of updates for various things, so that they can be downloaded locally of the Xnet network.

nathan

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#105706 19-Jan-2008 18:24

Microsoft uses Akamai as a CDN, so most of the time when you hit Windows Update and Microsoft Update you are actually hitting a "local" server, hence the speed which is normally pretty good

Whether the ISP charges this as local/national/international traffic is another matter altogether

To download locally, you can go to the site - Windows Update Catalog
http://catalog.update.microsoft.com/

Cheers
Nathan