On the 16th of this month our server (64 bit) was updated (automatically) with multiple server updates. One of more of these updates severely degrades the bandwidth throuput of the machine.
This machine is connected to a gigabit pipe to the Internet. Typically we see network utilization of about 500-600MB most times. but after these patches it dropped to 4.5-5MB. User were complaining because they were getting the content at the speeds they were used to (obviously). doing bandwidth test we were able to confirm that something was deffinately wrong. But what?
To cut a long story short, we eventually decided to uninstall the patches that were installed last (5 updates in all) and see if that helps. And it did. It cost us a lot in terms of time, money and customer goodwill, and so I'm posting this here for others.
we have yet to nail it down to one or more of the updates, but here is the list of updates that were uninstalled. Each one is "Important" and each one requires a re-boot.
Security Update for Windows Media Format Runtime 11 for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB954155)
Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB971486)
Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB974571)
Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB975467)
Security Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB975517)
Of course if anyone knows which one it is, please let me know.