Server Push For Applets?

John asks: "I'm designing a system where 10,000 applet based clients can view prices for a bunch of products. A requirement is that when a price changes, the clients see the new price within a few seconds. Basically, I'd like to push content to them. But a lot of them are behind firewalls, so a socket-based solution won't always work. OTOH, if they poll the server every couple of seconds using HTTP, that's 5,000 requests per second, which will require a server farm and multiple T1 lines. Does anyone know a more elegant way? I considered using HTTP requests that block in the server until a response is ready, but then I need to support 10,000 blocked threads and concurrent connections - another server farm. There's got to be a better way..."