Did Windows 10 Break The Internet?

I never thought I would talk about Microsoft and Kim Kardashian in the same blog but now it seems I have to. As they both “broke the internet”. On it’s launch day, everything seemed to be plain sailing but it seems the staggered roll-out meant that when lots of small firms turned on their computers today the background download of Windows 10 start and this led to packet loss and very variable speeds across a number of medium to small business focussed providers this week.

The symptoms started to appear almost dead on 9am today and may have peaked at around 10m, with at least one provider confirming they were seeing a lot of Microsoft/Akamai based traffic and at a sufficient volume to cause congestion. This seems to have been repeated around the world.

So why did this all go wrong?

It is all to do with the nature of networks in small firms is such that many computers will be set for automatic updates and thus the 9am boot-up while having the first cup of coffee will see the half dozen computers all in an office doing exactly the same thing.

So if you did experience a slow down this week – now you know why!