[Answered] Is akamai screwing up Windows Update?

Question

This problem has been solved here:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/62b9fd5c-10b2-4266-bc15-fcf3e79d20d4/solved-windows-firewall-rule-that-allows-windows-update?forum=w7itpronetworking
Everything from here down is obsolete.
There are 2 URLs involved with Windows Update. They are
(This is an excerpt of the help page related to my Windows Update failure.) Put those URLs in your memory banks, and then take a look at this:
What I'm trying to do is get the IP for 'download.windowsupdate.com'. Why? Because you can't put 'download.windowsupdate.com' into an outbound firewall allow rule, but you can put an IP into an outbound firewall allow rule.
But look what happens to my ping. I ping 'download.windowsupdate.com' but get back the IP for 'a767.g.akamai.net'.
Holy Smoke! I've never seen that. The DNS request is being completely overwritten by a different DN. It's like email forwarding, or like HTTP redirection, but at the DNS level. whois download.windowsupdate.com fails. Looking up 'download.windowsupdate.com'
at Network Solutions fails.
Could this be what's causing my Windows Update to fail?
This thread is closely related to this thread:
https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/065dae90-e76c-4b10-9258-b086ce59e46c/windows-update-error?forum=w7itpronetworking

Answer 1

Thank you for replying, mystifeid.
First, let's establish that prior to this evening (early morning now in the Eastern USA), everything worked except Windows Update. All I needed was an outbound firewall rule that would allow Windows Update. I've successfully created plenty of rules (I'm an
electronics engineer, formerly a developer at Intel). S.Sengupta gave me unwelcome advice. He wanted me to bring down my outbound firewall when all I need is a rule to allow Windows Update. Having responded with inappropriate advice that was not germane to
my issue, he did indeed poison the thread because no one at Microsoft will take my issue seriously after I reject his advice. And make not mistake, I reject his advice. Taking down the outbound firewall is dangerous and I will not do it. I realize that such
is the default setup, but that really makes the Windows Firewall with Advanced Security a sham, doesn't it. After all, why have a bi-directional firewall if you're going to open up outbound to any and all connections? I don't want to argue this point with
Microsoft technicians. If you insist that I have to take down the outbound firewall, then we might as well escalate this to Microsoft engineering right now and save ourselves a lot of typing.
Here's the rule I created to allow Windows Update. I named it "Allow Windows Update"
Name: Allow Windows Update
Group:
Profile: Public
Enabled: Yes
Action: Allow
Program: C:\Windows\System32\wuapp.exe
Local Address: Any
Remote Address: Any
Protocol: Any
Local Port: Any
Remote Port: Any
Allowed Computers: Any
Status: OK
Service: wuauserv
Rule Source: Local Setting
Interface Type: All interface types
Excepted Computers: None
Description:
As you see, I've enabled both the 'wuapp.exe' update launcher and the 'wuauserv' update service.
Kindly tell me: Why doesn't that rule work? Why can I not perform a Windows Update without bringing the outbound firewall down?
By the way, I took the advice a Microsoft technician gave earlier and now, only my Linux virtual machine can get on-line. The Windows host can't. I'm writing this in Firefox running in the Linux VM.
UPDATE: Windows host is back on-line. Windows Update still doesn't work, but the error code has changed to 8024402c (was 80072efd).