(Hopefully) easy question about applet / servlet communication

[imp]

I'm trying to create a client/server app using applets and servlets. (This is my first time playing with servlets, so please forgive any very ignorant remarks.) It looks fairly straightforward to make applet/servlet communication work when the applet makes requests to which the serlvet responds, but I'd like the servlet to also be able to push data to the applet without being prompted for a request. I was trying to do this with sockets (Socket / ServerSocket) but applet security wouldn't allow it. (Not sure if sockets can't be done at all with applets or if I'm just not making the connection correctly.) Perhaps there's an easier way? Is this hard to do or am I just missing something obvious? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.