Patent ID: 7133905
Filing Date: 2006-11-07
Classification: H04L,H04W

Abstract:
1. A method operative in a content delivery network (CDN) having a set of surrogate origin servers organized into regions and that provide content delivery on behalf of participating content providers, wherein a given content provider operates an origin server, comprising: establishing a cache hierarchy in the CDN comprising a given surrogate origin server region and one of: (a) a single parent region located in a given location, and (b) a subset of parent regions located in given core Internet locations; in response to a determination that a given object request cannot be serviced in the given surrogate origin server region, directing the given object request to the single parent region or to a given one of the subset of parent regions instead of to an origin server, wherein the directing step is based on content provider-specific metadata associated with the given object request and includes the sub-steps of rewriting a first data string associated with the given obiect request into a second data string that points to the cache hierarchy and resolving the second data string, wherein if the directing step directs the given object request to one of the subset of parent regions, the second data string is resolved to identify a best core region and an optimal server in the best core region to service the given object request; and attempting to service the given object request in the single parent region or the given one of the subset of parent regions as determined by the directing step.