Applies to
BranchCache for OSD General, StifleR General
Symptoms
This article was generated off the back of a support case where a customer had used the BranchCache for OSD toolkit to enable BranchCache in a Task Sequence but then noted that the BITS downloads seemed to be taking longer than expected with a download speed of only 0.486/0.607mb/s.
Cause
This is expected default behaviour.
The default Windows BITS policy limits bandwidth to 1Mb/s during standard business hours of Monday-Friday 08:00-17:00 and 2Mb/s during any other time.
Solution
There are several ways to manage this and increase the bandwidth used by BITS and expedite the distribution of content.
WinPE Generator Command Line Options
This appears in the BranchCache for OSD Toolkit Manual1.5.0.0:-
/Copy-BITSPolicy - Copies the local BITS policy into the WinPE Image, This overwrites the default BITS policy which is limited to 1Mb/s during business hours of Monday-Friday 08:00-17:00 and 2Mb/s during any other time. Ignoring speed limits on the LAN allows full throttle download for cached local content. Use GPEdit to create a local BITS policy which can then be copied automatically at build time.
This switch (in BC WinPE Generator.exe) is used to modify the WinPE Boot image and enables you to configure the BITS bandwidth used by your WinPE build clients.
Modify the Registry
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\BITS\Throttling
Under this key are various granular time periods available for modification.
Modifying these keys allows you to directly set the bandwidth consumed by the client.
The values are set in Kb/s by default (Kb/s type=1, Mb/s type=2, Unlimited type=3)
NOTE In order to protect resources BITS will never consume more than about 50-60Mb/s
Use HTTP
Sidestep BITS altogether and use HTTP. The issue with this option is that you lose your bandwidth control so things can get a little crazy! LEDBAT to the rescue?
Use StifleR to control BITS Bandwidth
Forget everything you’ve read. Head over to the 2Pint Software Product Pages and check out how you can use the awesome “set and forget” power of StifleR to control, monitor and report on your BITS infrastructure enterprise wide. StifleR allows you to monitor and control your downloads all from a central location.