Giovanni's blog: Delivery Optimization for Browser Updates and Desktop Software to Minimize Bandwidth Congestion
Wednesday, July 1, 2026
Delivery Optimization for Browser Updates and Desktop Software to Minimize Bandwidth Congestion
learn a lot about software optimizations by picking the slowest<br>procedure to complete something. Running a software or OS update in<br>the background on a fast computer with a fast internet connection is<br>usually an easy task because it is really invisible. This is the most<br>common sense solution to anyone with those pre-requisites. But what<br>if you have a slow internet connection? I have noticed Chrome and<br>Firefox have what's called "diferential" updates when a<br>browser is already installed. For minor security updates, this might<br>10-12MB. For a major release, such as Chrome 150, which was released<br>June 30th, this is a 100MB+ update. The full installation file is<br>somewhere around 465MB. I happened to have a lazy day today with few<br>obligations, so I did a little experiment. I have two Windows 10 PCs-<br>one a tower, and the other a laptop, with a 64 bit version of<br>Windows. One OS is actually Windows 10 Pro, so it's possible that the<br>Chrome versions for each are slightly different. However, I had a<br>Firefox updates on each machine as well, and they were only around<br>12MB. These didn't take very long to install, so they completed early<br>this afternoon.
After<br>I updated Firefox, I also noticed a Chrome update on my laptop, the<br>one with Windows 10 Pro (both are 22H2). It did seem to take a little<br>longer, and upon checking, realized it was upgrading not only from a<br>149.0.x, but two updates to a later 149.0.x version, and then to a<br>150.0.x version, which required at least two restarts (of the<br>browser). This completed sooner, sometime in the afternoon. By 3 or 4<br>pm, however, I noticed my other PC was still updating Chrome.<br>Granted, the occasional wifi dropped, and it had to resume or<br>restart, but I didn't think it would need to start all over again. A<br>couple hours later, I started to get really puzzled. As I mentioned<br>in earlier blog posts, I have been using a 384kbps connection for a<br>month to get a feel of some early internet speeds and to also see how<br>slow some programs are or dependent on heavy websites. However, I am<br>able to download a couple hundred MBs in a few hours, if needed. I<br>thought, even if it's downloading the full installer (~465MB), it<br>should only take 3 hours max. I reasoned that it might take longer to<br>update a browser if it has a lot of cache or cookies and needs to<br>patch specific account information without deleting sensitive data.<br>But I wasn't willing to erase everything or at least back it up<br>(although I am starting to think of exporting my bookmarks and<br>things).
Most<br>of this would be a non issue on even a 1Mbps connection, but 384kbps<br>is fast enough to start the update but not complete it without<br>hiccups. There is also the added issue of needing to ensure the PC<br>doesn't go into sleep or suspend if leaving it unattended for 15<br>minutes or whatever settings the Sleep is at- I set mine at 5 hrs.<br>But even with all that, at nearly 10:30pm the update is still taking<br>a long time, on Windows 10 Home. The computer isn't slow by any<br>means- there is more than 13GB of storage left, SSD, and is an 8 core<br>processor with plenty of RAM. So I started to reason that if the<br>updates are incremental, it's doing it in a very haphazard fashion. I<br>also checked the Resource Monitor, and saw over 40 lines of Disk<br>Activity showing cached writing, some which may have been for Chrome,<br>and some for system scans (like Defender). It seemed quite odd, so I<br>thought maybe there is a better way of at least displaying the<br>progress of the install. I only saw progress a few times- sometimes<br>updating up to 8%, stalling near 5%, and then seeing the update later<br>on at 1%. I didn't see a log anywhere of whether it actually did<br>restart, despite the wifi drops (which happened only a couple times),<br>but I did get the occasional error like this:
https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/264277904/unable-to-download-chrome-due-to-code-segment?hl=en
From<br>Gemini:
1. Clear Update Cache and Data<br>Corrupted temporary files often trigger this segment-length limit.<br>Close all open instances of the browser.
On your keyboard, press Windows Key + R to open the Run dialogue.
Type %localappdata% and hit Enter .
Navigate to the Google folder, then delete the Chrome folder entirely to reset the update files.<br>Google Help +1
2. Temporarily Disable Antivirus/Firewall<br>Strict antivirus policies or false-positive security blocks frequently disrupt executable downloads, resulting in the 64k limit error.<br>Turn off your third-party antivirus software or firewall for 10 minutes.
Attempt the update or download the fresh installer again.
Remember to re-enable your protection immediately afterward.<br>Google Help
3. Run a Fresh Full Installer<br>If built-in update checks repeatedly fail, bypass them by reinstalling the app directly:<br>Download the...