Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 upgrades loom like giant boulders poised to roll down and smash your IT network. One corporate IT manager we know tried to distribute the last beta image to a few dozen PCs and brought the whole network to its knees.
Vista, Outlook, and the growing bulk of SMS patches is causing IT admins to think about better ways to distribute big files, and IP multicast is one of the options at the top of the list. With built-in compression and point-to-multipoint distribution, IP multicast software slashes network bandwidth requirements for big file distribution and allows IT managers to set site-specific bandwidth and delivery time controls. And, since IP multicast is already built into most network routers, this solution is a simple matter of enabling the protocol and installing client and server software on existing equipment.
The leading multicast software vendor, Stratacache, has demonstrated its OmniCast product can simultaneously deliver files up to 1 TB in size to as many as 20,000 network endpoints from a single off-the-shelf Windows server. This could be the easiest and least expensive way to relieve network congestion, and with major Windows software upgrades on the horizon, it's appearing at exactly the right time.
Source: Stratacache www.stratacache.com