P2P, or peer-to-peer networking, is usually associated with grabbing illicit copies of movies and albums using BitTorrent (or, of course, those endless Linux distros everyone is downloading...). In Windows 10 Build 10036, however, Microsoft is embracing the technology as an efficient means of delivering software updates to users.

For many years now, using Windows Update to download updates and patches for your operating system has meant downloading files directly from Microsoft's servers. But this new method takes the strain off Microsoft and makes it possible to download some or all of the available updates from other computers.

For businesses running large networks, this could dramatically reduce bandwidth usage. It means that updates could be downloaded on one computer -- or just a few -- and others could grab the updates over the network rather than from the internet. It's a feature that will be of interest to home users with multiple computers, particularly when the time comes to download large updates; there will be no need to suck up bandwidth multiple times.

The feature goes further than this, though. As well as introducing the option to download updates from networked computers it also makes it possible to download from other computers online. This is something that will pay off when a service pack or other large update is released. It is at times like this that Microsoft's servers come in for a real hammering, and users frequently complain that updates take too long to download.

Activate the option to "Get updates from more than one place", and Microsoft says that you can "Download apps and OS updates from multiple sources to get them more quickly".

Microsoft has not said anything about the feature yet -- this is, after all, a leaked build -- but security features and verification techniques will have to have been implemented to assuage security fears and to ensure that only legitimate downloads are permitted. The new feature comes two years after Microsoft's acquisition of Pando Networks, a company that developed peer-to-peer technology.

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