Patent ID: 9344378
Filing Date: 2016-05-17
CPC Classification: G06Q,H04L

Claim Text:
1. A non-transitory computer-readable storage medium storing computer executable instructions that when executed by a computer control the computer to perform a method of operating a network storage service constructed from a plurality of storage devices, the method comprising: aggregating available storage space on a plurality of storage devices, where a member of the plurality of storage devices is accessed via a Wide Area Network (WAN) and has no service level guarantee, where a subset of the plurality of storage devices are super-nodes arranged in a ring network topology; offering the aggregated storage space to third parties as a network storage service for storing data, the network storage service being offered with a service level guarantee; coordinating the storage of third party data in the network storage service, where third party data is stored in an encrypted and redundant fashion, where storing third party data in a redundant fashion includes employing erasure encoding on the third party data before storing the third party data; monitoring usage information of a member of the plurality of storage devices, the usage information reflecting the use of the plurality of storage devices by third parties; upon determining that a performance level of a member of the subset of the plurality of storage devices has decreased below a threshold performance level, removing the member from the subset; upon determining that a performance level of a non-member of the subset has increased above a threshold performance level, adding the non-member to the subset, where the performance level is a function of location of a storage device, a bandwidth of a connection to the storage device, a processing capability of the storage device, or a reliability of the storage device; and charging the third parties in accordance with the determined usage information.