I've got an applet that is rather large (4MB) on a web page used by a few thousand users scattered across a WAN. Bandwidths to these users range from a paltry 128Kbps to 10Mbps.

The problem occurs when a new version of the applet is made available; it is downloaded automatically by all the users browsers effectively chocking the network.

They really hate 'release day' morning around here :)

Is there any strategy to work around this problem?

Edit: I can only serve this applet centrally from one pair of servers. I cannot make any modifications to the hosting or network infrastructure.