Recently, several libraries have complained about slow connectivity. After looking at traffic patterns for a few of them, we noticed that bandwidth seemed to immediately spike first thing in the morning and remain high for most of the day.
As it turns out, the libraries were using a steady state/Deep Freeze-type product on patron machines, but still had automatic updates enabled, and hadn't unlocked their machines for a real update in quite a while. Since the software would remove any changes made to their systems, the updates would be removed, only to be re-downloaded the next morning.
Since it had been about a year since the machines were unlocked and updated, they were downloading a year's worth of updates every morning, tying up the library connection for hours. Once the library unlocked the machines and allowed the downloads to complete, their network moved much faster. Problem solved!
Moral of the story: If your network is using these tools, you still need to unlock/unfreeze them and do regular updates. It will solve headaches, frustration and bandwidth issues.