Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 07 July 2010 16:17
Business IT -
Networking
Page 1 of 2
Blue Coat's PacketShaper now has the ability to monitor and control network traffic associated with Apple software updates.
A new, free plug-in for the Blue Coat PacketShaper adds Apple software updates to the list of traffic types that can be controlled by the appliance.
Company officials point out that Apple updates can be as large as 100MB. In fact, that figure is on the conservative side. As of this writing, 7 of the 10 most recent software updates from Apple were over 300MB (HP and Epson printer drivers, iOS 4, and various flavours of the Mac OS X 10.6.4 updates).
Only one of the 10 was significantly less than 100MB - the 5MB MobileMe Control Panel for Windows - and the combo update for Mac OS X Server 10.6.4 released last month was a huge 1.05GB.
The new PacketShaper plug-in allows administrators to limit the amount of bandwidth allocated to Apple software updates or enforce rules over what can be downloaded, at what time of day and with what priority.
"Companies need to manage and protect the bandwidth they have at Internet gateway points and across the WAN to ensure that critical business processes are not impaired or interrupted," said Rajeev Mitroo, managing director, Australia & New Zealand at Blue Coat Systems.
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