Patent ID: 11882340
Assignee: NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC H | IPC H

Claim 9:
10. A content distribution method executed by a unicast-multicast conversion device connected with a midstream zone between a terminal and a content server in a web distribution system of unicast communication and configured to convert unicast communication into multicast communication and send the multicast communication to a multicast communication network, the content distribution method comprising a processor and a storage medium having a computer program instructions stored herein, when executed by the processor, perform to:
receiving a content from the content server by using unicast communication and storing the content;
reading, when have received a request for a content group into which a plurality of contents are grouped from a multicast-unicast conversion device configured to convert multicast communication transmitted through the multicast communication network into unicast communication, the content group corresponding to the request from the content server and transmitting the read content group to the multicast communication network by using any one or both of unicast and multicast communication schemes; and
making a demand on the content server for the content group corresponding to the request from the multicast-unicast conversion device when the content group corresponding to the request from the multicast-unicast conversion device is not stored;
wherein the unicast-multicast conversion device divides the content into a plurality of blocks, stores the content in units of the divided blocks, and performs multicast or unicast transmission in the units of blocks, and when having received the blocks, the multicast-unicast conversion device restores the content by using the blocks.