I am trying to understand Desktop Centrals patching/replication speed settings. We have some smaller sites we manage that have 5, 10 or 15MB bandwidth pipes going into them. Our replication policies are set to over night at either 64KBps or 1MB.

Problem we're having is even at 64KBps, pushing software or patches to a site is killing the network. This caused a major issue this past Friday and knocked out an entire site.

If it's pushing at 64KBps and a site has a 10MB broadband connection, why does the replication use upwards of 80% of the bandwidth? Does DS not transfer BIT by BIT or does the distribution server just download from the DS server like you would a movie or game from online?

Also, at what speeds does Desktop Central transfer if a patch deployment is set to Deploy Immediately? It bypasses the set replication policy, so does it just max out at full bandwidth?