Hello,
I’m very satisfied with Avast since more than 2 years. I noticed something strange:
Virus database update is automatic and working well
Program update is set to 'Ask…", but I’m never asked. I can update manually when I read here an update is available, but not informed about it from the program.
Are some Windows services required to make this work ? If yes, what services ?
You’ll be notified in 7 days after program release.
Ok, I was thinking the notify was within a few hours maybe a day.
Thank you for the info.
No it is spread over a week to ease the load on the servers
Slightly off-topic, but closely related – I know that update notifications are typically spread out over a period of time for the vast majority of apps that have some kind of auto-check. And I already knew that this was to ease the load on the servers.
But I’ve always been curious – just how do the various notifiers accomplish this spread? Ranges of users’ IPs in more or less random order, maybe?
I’d probably do it on a client level. Have the software choose a given day of the week to perform the check. That way, you’d have a spread of users connecting at different times (unless they force the update-check before).
Every avast installation has a unique, randomly generated GUID (“general unique identifier”) associated with it (it is generated during installation).
This ID is random, but fixed.
We use this value to determine when the updater pops up on YOUR machine. I.e. the program already knows that the update is there, but it won’t tell you until it’s your turn 