Windows 10 rollout puts massive strain on web traffic

There's no doubt that the Windows 10 launch is going to put quite the strain on ISPs and content delivery networks (CDNs). However, a new blog post from Dan Rayburn on the Streaming Media Blog points to just how much bandwidth Microsoft is planning to eat up as its latest operating system pushes out to millions of users worldwide.

According to the report, Windows 10 has already hit the 10Tb/s mark spread out over several CDNs, but we're only into the first several hours of launch and Microsoft has planned for much more:

Based on numbers I am hearing from multiple sources, Microsoft has reserved up to 40Tb/s per second of capacity from all of the third-party CDNs combined. To put that number in perspective, some of Apple's recent largest live events on the web have peaked at 8Tb/s. Windows 10 is expected to be five times that and will easily be the largest day/week of traffic ever on the Internet. QoS problems are to be expected, especially since all of the CDNs will be rate limiting their delivery of the 3GB download and many ISPs will max out interconnection capacity in certain cities.

If Microsoft does manage to hit the 40Tb/s threshold with Windows 10's rollout, it will be quite impressive. If true, this data shows just how massive the Windows 10 rollout actually is, and further helps to illustrate why Microsoft chose to go with a staged rollout rather than unloading the upgrade to every user at once.

Source: Dan Rayburn; Via: Neowin

Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl