No updates unless clients are connected to the Internet.

Question

I'm fairly new to this, so please forgive me if my terminology is off.  I've just come into a new organization and don't really know much about how everything is laid out yet (first week here).  The other IT guys throughout the organization have
been attempting to set up WSUS at three separate locations. Their first plan was to set up a central WSUS at a single location and have the updates be pushed out over the VPN. This did not work for them, so they decided to set up a WSUS server at each location.
To make a long story short, one location is working without issues, but at another location's workstations are not updating via WSUS unless they are connected to the Internet. Has anyone else experienced this issue? 

Answer 1

WSUS can be implemented a number of ways. One of the methods, is to use WSUS only for the approvals but update files are downloaded from microsoftupdate.com.
Your scenario sounds a little like that.
you should check the windowsupdate.log of a few client machines, which should reveal a lot about what's happening.
You should also check the configuration on each of the WSUS servers, to determine the upstream/downstream/autonomous/replica status of each WSUS, and, each will have a configuration setting for "where to store update files" (store updates locally).
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd939859(v=ws.10).aspx
Don
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