Patent ID: 8683065

Claim:
A method on a computer server for multicasting data to a number of client devices comprising: exposing the data from a storage location through an application outside of control of a multicast transmission protocol operating on the computer server; creating a data stream of the data from the storage location in a format acceptable for transmission according to the multicast transmission protocol, further comprising dividing the data into a number of data blocks for transmission; and transmitting a first portion of the data blocks to a first client device upon initiation of a transmission session according to the multicast transmission protocol; receiving an indication that a second client device has joined the transmission session; and if the first portion of data blocks has already been transmitted, transmitting a second portion of the data blocks to both the first client device and the second client device, further including transmitting to the second client device information regarding a total number of data blocks in the transmission, the multicast transmission protocol being agnostic to data type and the multicast transmission protocol polling at least one of the first client device and the second client device to determine a block of the data not yet received by at least one of the first client device and the second client device.