Configuring PeerNest without the multicast function

Up to BigFix Platform 11.0.3, the PeerNest implementation is based on multicast UDP messages exchanged between the BigFix Clients (peers). In this old implementation, the BigFix Relay is completely unaware of PeerNest.

Starting from BigFix Platform 11.0.4, in the new PeerNest implementation, the BigFix Relay takes active part in the PeerNest architecture by acting as a file request broker. Each peer (BigFix Client) that needs to download a file asks the BigFix Relay for information about that specific file. The Relay will, then, keep track of "which BigFix Client has what" in the BigFix database by acting as a "custom tracker".

Enable the new PeerNest implementation by setting the _BESClient_PeerNest_DisableMulticast configuration parameter to 1 (default value is 0) on the BigFix Clients. A restart is required for the change to be effective. Clients that have multicast disabled (this configuration parameter set to 1) will not send any multicast messages but they will still be able to receive multicast messages from other Clients (if the network configuration allows to do so) and answer with unicast UDP messages, to ensure backward-compatibility with the old PeerNest implementation.

In this new PeerNest implementation:
  1. Clients will request to download files from the Relay; if the file is not available on any peer, the Relay will wait for a defined amount of time before answering, by default 30 seconds and will reply to the client with higher priority that requested the file, by allowing the client to download the file from the Relay. In the meantime, the other clients will be replied that the file is being downloaded by another peer, so they will keep asking for the file periodically until the first client completes the file download.
  2. The downloading client will notify the Relay that it completed the downloading and caching. The Relay updates the information in the database. The Relay replies to the other clients, which were still waiting for the file, by providing information about the client that is ready to share the file with them.
  3. The PeerNest network can increase the number of clients which share information with the Relay and files with the other peers. BigFix Clients (peers) must be located in the same subnet and they can share files among each other only if they are direct descendants of the same BigFix Relay.

The following picture shows a sample scenario in which three clients start downloading and sharing a file (File 1), while they are already sharing some previously downloaded files.