Validate BranchCache Capability

  • Article

2/13/2013

BranchCache is a wide area network (WAN) bandwidth optimization technology that enables branch offices to transparently share the contents downloaded from a remote server. To use BranchCache, files must be 64 KB or larger.

To optimize WAN bandwidth, BranchCache copies content from your main office content servers and caches the content at branch office locations, allowing client devices at branch offices to access the content locally rather than over the WAN.

At branch offices, content is cached either on servers that are running the BranchCache capability of Windows Server 2012 or, when no server is available in the branch office, on devices running Windows Embedded 8 Standard (Standard 8). After a client device requests and receives content from the main office and the content is cached at the branch office, other devices at the same branch office can obtain the content locally rather than contacting the main office over the WAN link.BranchCache helps improve content query response times for clients and servers in branch offices, and can also help improve network performance by reducing traffic over WAN links.

BranchCache is included in the Windows Embedded 8 Standard (Standard 8) and Windows Server 2012 operating systems. You must apply a volume license key to your Standard 8 device to enable BranchCache.

For more details about BranchCache, see BranchCache on TechNet.

Note

For BranchCache to work when the device is restarted, you must turn off write filters.

Validate BranchCache Capability

Distributed cache mode is when content is cached on client devices in the branch office.

Hosted cache mode is when content is cached on a server in the branch office.

To validate that BranchCache is enabled properly on a Standard 8 device, you can use the following step by step guides:

Important

The following guides refer to Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008. When using these guides, replace reference to Windows 7 with Standard 8 and references to Windows Server 2008 with Windows Server 2012.

See Also