The way we monitor where the iPads are grabbing the data from is by watching our firewall and seeing the IPs of the iPads pull down from the cache. I also check the network traffic on the server and you can see when kids log in on the iPads and in turn request the departmental apps assigned to them through AW.
We have definitely noticed a decrease of demand on our bandwidth here and there has been a slight improvement in download speeds, but when you have 25 iPads connecting to one AP you tend to be restricted by the capabilities of wi-fi more than your downlink.
However I believe that the Apple ID still needs to be verified by one of the two app store servers before downloading the App. Then again I could be completely wrong!
We use both AW and PM here and they both have their pro's but for ease Profile Manager wins by a country mile.
