Configuring BranchCache on Windows Clients

Configuring BranchCache via Command Line

In Windows 10 and Windows 11, BranchCache should already be installed, but not configured. There are multiple ways to configure BranchCache on clients, but individually this can be done by running the netsh command. This will configure the BranchCache service to the correct mode and set the required Windows Firewall rules.

netsh br set service mode=DISTRIBUTED

To check the status of the BrancheCache service, run the following command:

netsh br show status all

Configuring BranchCache Using Group Policy

See this Microsoft article.

BranchCache Ports

BranchCache operates on port 80 by default, so the InterVLAN transfer will be handled on port 80 + 1 = 81. Both of these ports can be used by other applications so please ensure that this is configured properly.

To avoid such issues our best practice recommendation is to use a custom port for BranchCache e.g. 1337 which would mean that you would then configure the InterVLAN port to be 1338 (default).