Hi Everyone,

Most of us are only too aware of the recent changes Microsoft has announced in regards to publishing patches. Cumulative patches is the way forward. Windows 7/8.1 (and a handful of others) now offer security updates and monthly rollups. Windows 10 offers servicing updates and feature upgrades. In either case, we expect a steep increase in the amount of data that gets transferred between the satellites and endpoints. This is where we, at Radia, have been busy figuring out what optimizations we can introduce to ease this distribution challenge.

I’m really excited to share that we plan to use a contemporary, industry-proven peer-to-peer (P2P) technology to address this distribution challenge. This is how it will work.

A new P2P server software will be co-located on every satellite and serve the endpoints of that satellite. P2P functionality will exist along with Radia agent and endpoints will connect to P2P server for resource downloads. Multiple endpoints fetch smaller chunks of a resource securely from P2P server and share it with other endpoints. Different peers connect to other peers, collect other chunks of the resource and assemble them locally and install it. Admins will be able to configure how long a peer will serve other peers, how long should the data cache last before wiping, how much bandwidth to utilize for communication etc. Incase P2P communication fails, Radia will fall back to traditional content distribution.

P2P will be a free, optional, secure software solution available out of the box in Radia 10.0 CP1 that can be enabled if you wish to use it. Planned GA date is spring 2017. Existing mechanisms will continue to work as before. P2P will be available for patch management first with a roadmap to bring it to both OS and software management in the future.

We are positive that Radia P2P solution will reduce network & server load, energy consumption and the time taken to distribute data. In the future, this could potentially help you reduce the number of satellites you need.

We would love to hear your thoughts.

Prasad (Product Manager, Radia)