[I'm responding here, rather than referring the question to the
update_services newsgroup, because there may be additional SUS
administrators who will find this information useful in expediting their
migrations to WSUS.]
WSUS uses BITS... and BITS manages bandwidth according to the load detected
on the NIC.
You can impose bandwidth limitations on BITS via Group Policy at
Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Network/Background
Intelligent Transfer Service
I don't have the actual default values for BITS throttling (I should
probably get those), but we can get a rough estimate of load by considering
a couple of basic factors about WSUS, some of which are similar to SUS.
Because the WUA executes a detection every 22 hours (actually randomly every
17.6 to 22.0 hours) by default, we can compute, approximately, the number of
clients that will be using a WAN link during any given hour. Divide the
number of clients at the site by 22, and that's the number of clients/hour
that will use the WAN link to execute WSUS activities.
Under normal circumstances, this traffic load will be measured in quantities
of packets, as the information flow between client and server is rather
insignificant unless actual updates have been detected for installation --
an activity that, under normal circumstances, will only occur once a month,
in a somewhat predictable fashion.
My best suggestion is to set up a test network with a WSUS server, a single
client, and slap a packet sniffer on the network and log the traffic. This
is an excellent opportunity for a Virtual PC environment. A 256MB WSUS
server, a 128MB XP PC, and about 8GB of disk space should be about all you
need. FIre up Network Monitor on the Win2003 WSUS server and watch what you
get.
Post by MeteorainHello,
We are looking to install a WSUS system in our organization. We have several
WAN sites with limited bandwidth from the WSUS server. Does anyone have any
numbers on the amount of bandwidth WSUS uses on a regular basis?
Thanks