Just like with Windows 10, its by default peer to peer so that you are giving your neighbors a copy of the updates with your own bandwidth instead of them getting it directly from Microsoft…
Everytime I play FS2020 my internet goes offline and strange things start happening and I ran wireshark and capture some packets on my router, I think whats happening is that Microsoft is using my instance of the game to share map data that I have predownloaded and cached with others around me that are also playing FS in the same region and this is taxing my internet upload speed a lot and it seems this is Microsoft’s cheapskate way of reducing burden in their servers and instead loadshedding and offloading that to the gamers, literally having us to subsidize Microsoft’s own obligations and doing a quasi crowdsourcing of sorts whereby we are providing each other with copies of the maps data etc instead of always centrally getting it from Microsoft Azure, much like what happened with Windows 10 updates…
I’ve not seen any evidence of this and I routinely monitor my internet traffic while in sim. But from a technical point of view it could make sense. I’ll suggest it to them 
Humm , now you have you me curious! My gut says no but…
Ive noticed no difference setting windows delivery optimizations on/off but who knows
Let’s not bother with conspiracy theories eh?
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You’re mistaken to dismiss OPs question (however cynical) as conspiracy. As far back as 2017, the default configuration for Windows update was exactly this.
The default peer-to-peer upload “feature” of windows update can be found under “Delivery Optimization”.
It’s not at all unreasonable to ask the question of if there is a similar configuration built into the MSFS platform. I’d argue it would be more strange if Microsoft didn’t shift load from azure and use peering than not.
This should be a relatively straightforward question to answer. For example, Microsoft and/or Asobo could clarify this.
Wireshark and other tools could be used to look into this. Simply looking at the up/down traffic via task manager won’t give you enough information to say with any certainty.
Every amount of directional traffic is going to have some quantity of corresponding traffic the opposite way; simply seeing upload traffic (or conversely, seeing none of it) tells you very little.
OP can you post a link or screen cap of the TCP/UDP traffic. You’ll need to redact or anonymise it as needed.
Without that, the question will be hard to answer unless someone wants to read a EULA, etc.
I don’t think they do it though it is technically doable. If they have any peer to peer mechanics built in this simulator, most of us wouldn’t suffer from downloading & installing the title. Further more, they will have a toggle switch in options if they do as MS is a international company and always aware of legal stuffs.
If you believe they implement peer to peer, you can share some packets from wireshark.
I think peer to peer is a good idea and I strongly suggest Asobo consider make it happen so we can have better experience regarding to downloading / network streaming. I would like to share my bandwidth to make the sim work better.
EDIT: I’ve watched the traffic and very small uplink compared to downlink. If you capture some downlink from different peers, these will mostly be Azure cloud servers. If you get some heavy uplink traffic to different peers, then they may be the peer to peer sharing you mentioned.
Peer to peer can be controlled by a settings on Windows and if someone doesn’t want it, just turn it off.