Q. What is BranchCache?

A. Many organizations have distributed environments, with users at remote locations connected via fairly slow, high latency links. It's often a challenge for users at these locations to access data at the hub locations, with end users experiencing slow access. BranchCache aims to improve this experience by allowing data downloaded by one client at a remote location to be accessible to all clients in that location in one of two ways.

In both modes, the source server is still contacted to obtain hash values for the data that's requested. It is through the hash values that clients can request data from its peers or the caching server. Because the hash identifies the data based on content, the use of the hash stops clients from obtaining outdated cached data from the BranchCache. If the data changes on the source, a new hash is generated.

Note that only data that has a hash value can be cached using BranchCache. Currently, only Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 support BranchCache.

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