Patent ID: 7764683

Claim:
A method for provisioning a computer application to nodes in a computer network, comprising: receiving, at each of a plurality of nodes that are communicatively linked to a digital communications network, a signal from an image server; in response, loading a multicast installer on each of the plurality of nodes; at each of the nodes, operating the multicast installer to listen for and identify multicast packets having a particular multicast group address on the network, wherein each of the multicast packets represents a portion of a provisioned image, and wherein the provisioned image is divided into two or more phases that are each divided into two or more chunks, with the multicast packets providing data for the chunks of the phases; at each of the nodes, caching the identified multicast packets according to an ordering scheme that allows the phases and the chunks to be reconstituted in an appropriate order; at each of the nodes, determining with the multicast installer that the cached multicast packets represent a minimum portion of a provisioned image to proceed to a provisioning state, wherein the minimum portion represents less than an entirety of the provisioned image; and at each of the nodes, when the minimum portion is determined, installing the cached multicast packets in nonvolatile memory.