Nanog folk, Last week, I downloaded XP2 SP2 on one the major P2P networks (eDonkey). Preliminary/FYI: None of the large organizations I am involved with has deployed SP2 on a large scale yet. Users that request it will likely get it (from a share on a corporate server that is); some organizations are also testing their SP2 image by rolling out some of the new PCs with SP2; help desks are still building FAQs about it as problems generated by early adopters pop in. I expect most to push it to the desktop with SMS or similar within a month. Hard facts: - The P2P download took two hours. Ymmv. - The file was legit (I did a binary compare with the original; matches). The file I downloaded is WindowsXP-KB835935-SP2-ENU.exe. This is the full install; the slower your connection to the net is the more you want to download this only one-time and make it available locally and burn a CD with it. - The original file has been available from Microsoft for at least three weeks free of charge, no need for any kind of signup. Comments: - If I did not have the original file I would not have know which one to grab. The most distributed files were complete slipstreams, not SP only (I selected the best file of matching size). - Two hours for 266 MB is not too shabby in the absolute, but the original downloaded in less than 15 minutes from home each time and tried and a lot less from the office depending where I was. - On some P2P systems this kind of download speed can typically be achieved only by sharing files to get a good U/L ratio. People that don't share files would get at the end of the queue. - I typically get much better download speeds while sharing than people with an el-cheapo router because I QOS the upstream; one of the annoyances of sharing files is that it will tend to clog the upstream making even surfing rather painful. - Downloading with P2P requests installing a client and possibly poking holes in the NAT/Firewall. - There is a trust issue. When the file I get is from Microsoft from a download that I initiated myself not by clicking on a link provided by someone else, I would tend to trust it. OTOH, all P2P systems feature large amounts of illegal contents, including some that does not even exist (Norton utilities 2004, anyone?). - I never experienced nor heard any significant pipe clogging because of SP2. Contrary to some FUD propagated earlier there was no operational issue as a consequence of the download process. Conclusion: I did not see any advantage of using P2P to download XP SP2 and several drawbacks. I will continue to download patches directly from vendors. Michel.