Since the first release of Windows Vista Beta 2 to the general public last Wednesday, Microsoft has been deluged by a tidal wave of download requests from Vista enthusiasts anxious to be the first to get their hands on the trial software.

The flood of interest initially caused the software giant to post a message asking those interested in the beta to send in for the DVD instead of downloading the files.

Traffic Jam

The 32-bit version of the software weighs in at over 3 GB. On a cable or DSL broadband connection, the download will take several hours. The 64-bit version, at 4.4 GB, naturally will take even longer.

A company representative said that increasing the bandwidth allowance any further to allow more users to download the software would create a real possibility of "taking down the Internet."

"It's not that we didn't anticipate this level of interest or demand, but that we are at the threshold of what the Internet can bear," a member of the Vista development team wrote in a blog posting.

While it is doubtful that downloads of Vista could bring down the entire Internet, said Mukul Krishna, an analyst at Frost & Sullivan, it is possible that increased Vista traffic could significantly degrade network performance around the world.

"It probably can't shut the Internet down, but, due to the global anticipation for Vista and Microsoft's presence everywhere, there is an extremely high degree of interest," Krishna said.

Going P2P

To alleviate the strain on Microsoft's servers, several bloggers suggested that the company officially release the beta on peer-to-peer (P2P) networks. Doing so, they argued, would let users download the software more quickly.

"If Microsoft was interested in maximizing the availability of the Vista public beta, they could have leveraged P2P distribution," said Nitin Gupta, a Yankee Group analyst.

Microsoft, however, squashed the idea, citing "legal and privacy issues" and the inability to guarantee that the version downloaded would not be altered.

Gupta pointed out that BitTorrent has been used to facilitate Linux downloads for years. He also noted that because Microsoft has chosen not to set up official torrents for the beta, unofficial copies have been created, increasing the potential for compromised versions of the OS being downloaded and installed on PCs.

"Though users are going to put copies of Vista -- actual and spurious -- on P2P sites, being cognizant of the danger it can do its brand, Microsoft should not give them its blessing," Krishna argued.