(imported topic written by SystemAdmin)
Is multicast an option in Bigfix? It would be great to multicast a large download and have over 1000 slow WAN connections pick it up simultaneously. We’re looking for any creative ways to improve the efficiency of our large WAN. Ideas?
(imported comment written by BenKus)
Hey Jon,
You can’t multi-cast BigFix downloads directly in BigFix (although we have worked with some customers to use their multi-casting infrastructure to move large files around so that they are available on all the branch relays).
From my (somewhat limited) knowledge of multi-casting, it is only useful if you have shared network connections (otherwise it doesn’t have much value over point-to-point protocols because you have to send the data over the individual links in either scenario)… Does your WAN use a shared connection for the 1000 branches?
(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)
We have dual DS3s to our MPLS cloud. Each of our almost 1100 endpoints hangs off the cloud. From the perspective of our network engineers, it would make significant sense to transmit the data to the cloud once with the relay at each endpoint picking it up as opposed to each relay having to pull the same large package across the cloud.
The bandwidth savings would be huge. Consider the scenario of a 1MB deployment to machine in all 1100 location. Under the present model, that represents 1.1GB of bandwidth. Under multi-cast, it would be 1MB + multi-cast overhead.
I’d love to be able to put some relays in the middle of the MPLS cloud … that would be optimal location … but I might as well keep dreaming …
Any plans for multi-cast in the future?
Any other creative ideas to optimize data delivery in the huge hub with ~1100 spokes model that we have?
(imported comment written by BenKus)
Hey Jon,
But do all your computers receive every packet that you send to the cloud? I guess a different way to ask is whether the network configuration that you described would support multi-cast? I know certain networks (like satellite based networks) actually use a shared connection so multicast works well… but if your network would actually need to retransmit the data independently to each node because of the underlying network technologies, then you wouldn’t actually get a savings.
Ben
(imported comment written by BenKus)
One of our product managers mentioned that they have seen some multi-cast software that might work for you (to precache the download files)… I will see if I can find the name of it…
Ben
(imported comment written by SystemAdmin)
My network manager is telling me that multi-cast would be advantageous. I’m not intimately familiar with the details of our MPLS cloud, so I’ll take his word for it.
Any suggestions or recommendations are appreciated.
Jon
(imported comment written by JackCoates91)
Hi Jon,
It sounds like you’d want the agent to be multicast aware, not just the relays, correct? There are a number of open source multicast systems out there, one cross-platform tool is UDP Cast (http://udpcast.linux.lu/). I haven’t used any of them personally, though. Another approach is to robocopy or rsync relay caches. FYI, multicast requires lock-step timing in order to work appropriately, which is a more server driven approach than client driven.
Jack