The proper solution for data plans is not to avoid features that are harmful in their presence entirely, but rather for the OS to be aware of when it's connected via a metered/capped connection, and behave differently. Just like how Android devices can detect when they're connected to "open" wi-fi hotspots and auto-wrap their connection in a Google VPN.

Just because you have a logical reason to not want to serve updates, should not prevent IT admins from getting a good default experience when they have 1000 machines on a LAN that all want to update.

> but rather for the OS to be aware of when it's connected via a metered/capped connection, and behave differently.

Pretty much all internet connections are metered/capped, though prior to recent FCC transparency rules the caps on residential fixed broadband were often undisclosed or affirmatively misrepresented under false "unlimited" labels.

Making the OS appropriately sensitive to the costs incurred by each network-involved transaction relating to updates and the system owner's preferences regarding balancing those costs against the value they provide in update experience is abstractly ideal but decidedly difficult.

As i was saying above, the majority use-case of update sharing is sharing updates over a LAN to other computers in the same office.

Note that, even in that case, the connection to the outside world might still be metered/capped—but the connection to LAN peers obviously isn't. That means that "does this traffic cost anything" is an evaluation the OS would have to make per socket (or requested socket from a higher-level library, like Windows' BITS), rather than per interface.

The point you are making about per-socket evaluation here is what I was trying to get at with the "network-involved transaction" reference in GP.

Man, windows 10 already does that. In the advanced update options there is a distributing method menu and it is pretty clear they are using our machines to distribute updates to others.

Disclaimer: Haven't checked in a while and can not do it now, but it was there until not long ago.

Yes it's still there. I just turned it off last week. But still let it share the updates with the other computers in my household LAN.

Is this on by default?

IIRC yes, unless your internet connection is marked as Metered, in which case the default is off.

What I can't remember and am unable to check at the moment is whether Metered is turned on by default or not.

But regardless of defaults, if you mark a connection as Metered than the background update distribution is turned off.

Metered is part of your connection settings, iirc, like when you establish a connection to a new wifi network. Other applications may be effected by metered networks, and iirc updates don't run at all when on a metered network.

Makes me even happier to use Linux almost exclusively now.

If you use steam or battle-net, you are already doing it.

Done respectfully, it can be a great way to make everybody's file arrive faster while balancing the traffic better.

Regretfully steam does _not_ use p2p downloads. People running lan parties would be so much happier if steam would just do a lan broadcast to look for local copies of a game before downloading. (a very limited form of p2p)

They already have local streaming for games so they have the infrastructure for this.

Agreed, even if peers seed 1:1, then they are only sending out as much as they received and the servers can reach twice as many people.

> With recent developments in net neutrality and data plans, p2p could drastically impact my data plan and cost me money.

The solution is to pressure your government to make net neutrality a law and vote with your dollars and use ISPs and network providers that are not intent on breaking the Internet. All Internet nodes need to have the same access to the network. "I am too lazy to do anything about it and too cheap to pay for data" is not a valid argument on a discussion forum called Hacker News.

There is no reason you should be required to distribute any content to participate. Leeching content from your peers is still a beneficial behavior from the perspective of the content producer due to the reduced cost of distribution.

Seeding a website would be like paying a membership fee with surplus currency that you have been throwing away monthly.

With the proper incentives and controls I suspect there is content you would be compelled to seed.

It beneficial for you as well. You benefit from faster updates. Just like torrenting film is beneficial to you because you benefit from fast movie download.