I've got an applet that is rather large (4MB) on a web page used by a few thousand users scattered across a WAN. Bandwidths to these users range from a paltry 128Kbps to 10Mbps.
The problem occurs when a new version of the applet is made available; it is downloaded automatically by all the users browsers effectively chocking the network.
They really hate 'release day' morning around here :)
Is there any strategy to work around this problem?
Edit: I can only serve this applet centrally from one pair of servers. I cannot make any modifications to the hosting or network infrastructure.
If you can put a .htaccess in the directory you can add expiresByType so that the client doesn't ask the server everytime.
Have you looked at pack200? and (pack200 + .htaccess) Have you looked at indexed Jar?
Anthony