So I was responsible for setting up a sattalite (hughes) internet link in the middle of nowhere at a military base, and at 600ms pingtime and 0.5Mbps
upload, bandwidth was hard to come by.

The internet was completely unusable, I could disconnect certain segments of our network and it would become usable, even in the middle of the night when nobody was doing anything. I could use tcpdump and analyze the dns queries and these god damned windows workstations were noisy as hell, so I theorized, maybe, hey, its updates and telemetry?

Well, to get some hard data, I installed http://www.ntop.org/products/traffic-analysis/ntop/ onto the egress router (a pfSense machine), and sure enough, Windows traffic accounted for 80% of our bandwidth.

So, did you know, that your windows computers share updates with other windows computers on the internet? Windows Updates work like p2p traffic, torrents or others, they make dozens of simultanous HTTP gets and upload as well -- completely saturating low-bandwidth links. See article, http://www.iolo.com/resources/articles/the-bandwidth-hogging-windows-feature-y ou-need-to-disable/

So for days all employees were sitting at their windows laptops bitching and moaning that the internet doesn't work, they can't load websites, etc. -- the final solution was to disable this update setting and set all telemetry to 'basic' across the 20+ machines on-site. And just like that, the internet was fixed, and everything worked fine.

I also implemented some basic traffic shaping which helps, if any of you folks are sharing internet across many devices, I would highly recommend the most basic 'ACK' packet prioritization, http://lartc.org/wondershaper/ -- this
linux project is the first I was aware of it, but the basic theory is simple and can be implemented on any os (except windows). Anyway, nobody uses windows as a router anyway.

Anyway, fuck windows, fuck microsoft, really ruined my week, I was supposed to be writing code, and got tricked into fucking with windows settings all week
to get a working internet. Fuck windows.

--- Enthral BBS 0.700.1 (4.9.35-1-ARCH armv7l GNU/Linux)
* Origin: haunting The chapel >>--> htc.zapto.org <--<< (46:1/140)

On 09/08/17, dingo said the following...

traffic, torrents or others, they make dozens of simultanous HTTP gets
and upload as well -- completely saturating low-bandwidth links. See article, http://www.iolo.com/resources/articles/the-bandwidth-hogging-windows-featu

Thanks for the link. I'm about to put together a new Windows machine after using only Linux and Mac OS X for the longest time. I'll make sure to check this setting.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A31 (Raspberry Pi)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (46:1/166)

On 09/08/17, dingo considered the following...

Anyway, fuck windows, fuck microsoft, really ruined my week, I was supposed to be writing code, and got tricked into fucking with windows settings all week to get a working internet. Fuck windows.

Thanks for this info. Very informative.

Mick

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A33 (Windows/32)
* Origin: Central Ontario Remote (46:1/186)

Re: windows 10 tracking/updates
By: dingo to all on Fri Sep 08 2017 04:07 pm

So I was responsible for setting up a sattalite (hughes) internet link in the middle of nowhere at a military base, and at 600ms pingtime and 0.5Mbps upload, bandwidth was hard to come by.

Sounds like pinging Mcmurdo Station in Antarctica back in the old days.
--- SBBSecho 3.01-Win32
* Origin: realitycheckbbs.org -- yesterday's tech today (46:1/115)

Re: windows 10 tracking/updates
By: dingo to all on Fri Sep 08 2017 04:07 pm

So, did you know, that your windows computers share updates with other windows computers on the internet? Windows Updates work like p2p traffic, torrents or others, they make dozens of simultanous HTTP gets and upload as well -- completely saturating low-bandwidth links. See article, http://www.iolo.com/resources/articles/the-bandwidth-hogging-windows-featur e-y ou-need-to-disable/

Yea, but Microsoft will sell you a product called SCCM to fix that problem. :)
--- SBBSecho 3.01-Win32
* Origin: realitycheckbbs.org -- yesterday's tech today (46:1/115)

Anyway, fuck windows, fuck microsoft, really ruined my week, I was supposed to be writing code, and got tricked into fucking with windows settings all week to get a working internet. Fuck windows.

I endorse this message. Microsoft LOVES making their OS's so freakin complicated for a end user. GNU&Linux, FreeBSD, etc. are SOOOOOO
much easier.
The last time I was able to figure out a proprietary OS, was
AmigaOS/Workbenc, and Atari ST TOS/Atari 8bit DOS

-=][DJ aTRoPiNE][=-

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A27 (Windows)
* Origin: d i s t o r t i o n // d1st.org (46:1/145)

Re: windows 10 tracking/updates
By: djatropine to dingo on Fri Sep 22 2017 11:41 pm

I endorse this message. Microsoft LOVES making their OS's so freakin complicated for a end user. GNU&Linux, FreeBSD, etc. are SOOOOOO
much easier.
The last time I was able to figure out a proprietary OS, was AmigaOS/Workbenc, and Atari ST TOS/Atari 8bit DOS

Funny you say that - It seems that more people seem to think Linux etc. are a lot more complicated than Windows. Many people are intimidated by a command line and probably wouldn't know how to use the command prompt (which I think is still necessary to use in many cases in *nix). One of my friends said he had tried Linux once and was lost, and he kept on using Windows. Maybe it was just a matter of being familiar with Windows and not knowing anything about Linux.. That's probably the case with many people, and I don't think it helps that there are dozens of Linux distros available, which are all different from each other (some more significantly different, some only slightly different).

Nightfox

|08·── |15djatropine |07Said |08──·|07
The last time I was able to figure out a proprietary OS, was
AmigaOS/Workbenc, and Atari ST TOS/Atari 8bit DOS
|08·── |15djatropine |07Done |08──·|07

All of which were mighty fine choices good sir/madam. The Amiga 500 was the first computer I was able to get for myself, found an old open box at Video Concepts at the mall, last one for $200 heh. I ended up saving up for a new Amiga 1200 after that.


|01· |14d|12a|04rkwi|12n|14g
|01└──────────────────┐
|08 +o |14S|12k|04yNET Syste|12m|14s |01·

--- iniquity² v2.0α
* Origin: |15■|09■|01■|09|17▌ |15SkyNET Systems +%+ [6O2] |09▐|16|01■|09■|15■ (46:1/191)

Funny you say that - It seems that more people seem to think Linux etc. are a lot more complicated than Windows. Many people are intimidated by
a command line and probably wouldn't know how to use the command prompt (which I think is still necessary to use in many cases in *nix). One of my friends said he had tried Linux once and was lost, and he kept on
using Windows. Maybe it was just a matter of being familiar with
Windows and not knowing anything about Linux.. That's probably the case with many people, and I don't think it helps that there are dozens of Linux distros available, which are all different from each other (some more significantly different, some only slightly different).

Nightfox

Now when it comes to network security I am a complete moron. I have the
basic stuff ufw as my packet filter, etc. Growing up on a Commodore 64 taught me to not be intimidated by command lines.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A31 (Raspberry Pi)
* Origin: Alcoholiday / Est. 1995 / alco.bbs.io (46:1/166)

On Sunday, September 24th Nightfox muttered...

Funny you say that - It seems that more people seem to think Linux etc. are a lot more complicated than Windows. Many people are intimidated by a command line and probably wouldn't know how to use the command prompt (which I think is still necessary to use in many cases in *nix).

While I'm always in the command line, I don't think this is necessairly the case anymore. I've installed desktop distros on a few computers of uh... let's call them not so savy computer users like my mother. ...never looked back. A lot of people use computers for email, web browsing, and word processing, so they really don't know/care about the difference between say Elementary OS or Mint and Windows or OS X.





--- ENiGMA 1/2 v0.0.8-alpha (linux; x64; 6.11.3)
* Origin: Xibalba -+- xibalba.l33t.codes:44510 (46:1/173)

Re: windows 10 tracking/updates
By: Nightfox to djatropine on Sun Sep 24 2017 07:00 pm

That's probably the case with many people, and I don't think it helps that there are dozens of Linux distros available, which are all different from ea other (some more significantly different, some only slightly different).

Nightfox

On the other hand, that is one of the nice things about Linux. Actually, you can take about any distro you want and if you don't like the interface, you can just change it. If you are using Ubuntu, chances are that they may have a variant in with the interface you like if it's one of the more major ones such as KDE, Gonme, LXDE, etc. Once you've selected one, you can usually modify it further to create the interface you like. Many such as LXDE also appear similer to the classic Windows UI in their default state. Even JWM is easy to configure using it's XML file. Of course this is from the perspective of someone who knows how to work with these.

- Please enter password or put in a bootable floppy to bypass.