Channels are updated efficiently in the background, so software distribution uses minimal bandwidth and mission-critical data can be transmitted reliably. When users browse your Web site, it's possible to monitor them and determine how they navigate the site to help you improve its design and better meet the needs of users. One limitation to schemes that send the site's content to the user is that you might no longer have the capability to monitor how your users move around your site. Each channel can transmit a stand-alone Java application, a Java applet, HTML pages, or even a whole Web site to the user. Channels are stored locally on the client system, and users can access channels repeatedly without waiting for their contents to download every time.
Channels give developers a more effective mechanism for publishing content and software.
A tuner - a client application that gives users access to multiple channels and delivers user preferences and responses back to the channel's source, on the transmitter. Apple Computer recently announced that it will bundle the Castanet Tuner with its new Mac OS Runtime for Java, a Java virtual machine. Mac OS Runtime for Java will incorporate the Castanet Tuner directly, giving developers a new way to efficiently distribute Java applets and applications to the Mac OS market. A transmitter - software that resides on a server and transmits channels to tuners. This fast polling mechanism enables Castanet to support a high number of clients with a single server.