How Large Are OTA Updates and What is Actually in Them?

[Jim Holder]

Hi All,

Anyone know how large the over-the-air updates Tesla sends to our cars are and what information is in them and how they are patched into the car's operating system?
Very little seems to be written about this as far as I could tell from a cursory google search.

Just curious about it as it seems fascinating but not well documented by fans and enthusiasts.

I did find this interesting tidbit:

"...But cellular data can be expensive. This may be why Tesla turned to Israeli software specialist Redbend, purchased last year by Harman International, to process the over-the-air rollout of its Autopilot driver-assist system in 2015. With a technology called Smart Delta, Redbend can replace only the code that needs to be changed, rather than the entire file. If you're paying a cent per megabyte, and you need to send 500 megabytes to thousands or millions of cars, that's a lot of money," Oren Betzaleli, head of product, strategy and marketing at Redbend, said in an interview. "If you can save 90 percent of that, or even 50 percent, that's a huge improvement."

The entire article can be found here:
Over-the-air updates on varied paths

 

[alfmatsenius]

I read the Wikipedia article but it's not totally clear on how Android updates are pushed to devices. This is what I understood but am not certain which is correct so please add details to approve or disapprove my statements.

Case A Phone has some service that periodically checks manufacturers servers (with some sort of polling) then if there is a new update it informs the user with a notification. User than clicks the notification and downloads and installs update from manufacturers server

Case B OS updates are just like ordinary software updates, there is a Google Cloud Messaging or similar broadcast receiver active on the phone and manufacturers just send message using this which shows user a notification. User than clicks the notification and downloads and installs update from manufacturers server

Case C Phone is notified about the updates by the mobile network (over-the-air provisioning (OTAP) like MMS and WAP settings) and than it shows a notification of the update. User than clicks the notification and downloads and installs update from his/hers mobile network provider

These all seem probable but consider these cases: What would happen if phone is not registered on network for a long time and internet is disabled (think of a tablet without internet access for example)? Why are phones with same version (international version) of firmware getting new updates at different times on different networks?

NOTE: I recently found out that CyanogenMod has OverTheAir updates in newer versions, how are they doing this, I doubt they have mobile network providers support?

 

[Jim Holder]

I'm specifically referring to the OTA updates pushed to our Tesla cars.

Has anybody packet-sniffed the updates to see what is in them?

Is it several megabytes, half a gigabyte, 5 GB?

 

[Murbs]

From my car's wifi download usage, it looks like the 17.9.3 update was about 365MB

 

[Jim Holder]

From my car's wifi download usage, it looks like the 17.9.3 update was about 365MB

That's cool! How do you access that page?

 

[Murbs]

That's cool! How do you access that page?

I've got a physical internet filter at home that shows every connected device's internet usage including websites visited and data uploaded and downloaded. (It's called ParentPower but is only available in Australia.)