When to start using Mirror Tool

If you have an offline environment, meaning the computers in your network do not connect to the internet for a prolonged period of time (months, a year) the Mirror Tool (available for Windows and Linux) is the only way to distribute product module updates, because it downloads all available Level and Nano updates during each new update request if there is a new update available.

Read this Knowledgebase article to set up Mirror Tool chaining (configure Mirror Tool to download updates from another Mirror Tool).

The major difference between Apache HTTP Proxy and Mirror Tool is that Apache HTTP Proxy downloads only missing updates (for example, Nano update 3), while Mirror Tool downloads all available Level and Nano updates (or only Level updates, if specified), regardless of which update the specific product module is missing.

Streamed updates are not available with Mirror Tool. We recommend to prefer update via HTTP Proxy to update from a mirror wherever possible. Even if a computer is offline but has access to another machine that is connected to the internet and can run HTTP Proxy to cache update files, select this option.

In the same network of 1,000 computers we tested the Mirror Tool instead of Apache HTTP Proxy. The analysis showed there were 5,500 MB of updates downloaded for the month. The size of downloaded updates did not increase by adding more computers to the network. This is still a huge decrease in load compared to a configuration where clients connect directly to the internet, but the improvement in performance is not as substantial as when HTTP Proxy is used.

No. of PCs in your corporate network	25	36	50	100	500	1,000
Direct connection to internet (MB/month)	375	900	1,250	2,500	12,500	25,000
Mirror Tool (MB/month)	5,500	5,500	5,500	5,500	5,500	5,500

Even if there were more than 1,000 computers in a network, the bandwidth usage concerning updates would not increase significantly using either Apache HTTP Proxy or Mirror Tool.

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