Optimizing Network Load for Patch Deployments in High-Demand Environments

Usage and Config Platform
1

Hello,

I’m currently encountering issues at some of our infrastructure locations where older, lower-capacity switches are struggling with the network demand generated by client devices. I’m looking to explore methods to reduce this network load, either by optimizing the relay configuration or adjusting the client-side behavior to prevent switches from being overwhelmed.

Here’s an example: When deploying a 1GB patch across our environment, multiple clients (up to 500 per network segment) simultaneously request this content from their respective relay, leading to bottlenecks and even network disruptions at certain sites.

I have already configured the “Stagger action start times over X minutes to reduce network load” setting for some deployments, which has helped, but I’m interested in additional techniques to further minimize the impact on these locations.

Each site currently has a dedicated relay, and while most do not exceed 300 clients, they rely on older switches, which we plan to replace. However, until the upgrades are complete, we need to mitigate network congestion to avoid disruptions in our automated factory systems.

Any insights or alternative strategies you could share to help make patch deployments less taxing on our network would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your assistance.

Best regards,

2

That’s kind of tricky. The usual problem we see with network bandwidth is not the local network within a site, but the WAN links connecting sites to each other; there, the answers are usually to either deploy more relays to local sites, or use PeerNest to share downloads between clients so fewer of them cross a WAN link to do the download.

If your local networks are the problem, and not the links between sites or between switches, then adding PeerNest might actually make it worse.

I’d probably look at Bandwidth Throttling on your in-site Relays at the slow sites. Referring to List of settings and detailed descriptions I’d probably start with _BESRelay_HTTPServer_ThrottleKBPS and limit it to some bandwidth you think your switches can handle ok. This setting limits the download speed that the Relay will support when clients are requesting files from it. That’s probably the easiest place to tune it.

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