Abstract: A method and corresponding system for multicast provisioning of operating systems (OS) at reduced bandwidth. The method includes providing a computing device on a digital communications network. An OS image is stored in the computing device, with the image including data sets or chunks making up one or more phases of a system image. The method continues with associating a single multicast address with each of the data sets. The computing device broadcasts each of the data sets of the image along with the associated multicast address on the network as a repeating loop. The method includes sending a signal from the computing device to a set of nodes on the network to initiate a process for loading the stored image, and in response, operating the nodes to load a multicast installer that listens for the data sets and buffers received data packets in an image cache.

Abstract: A method and corresponding system for multicast provisioning of operating systems (OS) at reduced bandwidth. The method includes providing a computing device on a digital communications network. An OS image is stored in the computing device, with the image including data sets or chunks making up one or more phases of a system image. The method continues with associating a single multicast address with each of the data sets. The computing device broadcasts each of the data sets of the image along with the associated multicast address on the network as a repeating loop. The method includes sending a signal from the computing device to a set of nodes on the network to initiate a process for loading the stored image, and in response, operating the nodes to load a multicast installer that listens for the data sets and buffers received data packets in an image cache.