Patent ID: 8954491
Filing Date: 2015-02-10
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A method comprising: executing, with an application-layer traffic optimization (ALTO) server, a routing protocol to maintain layer three (L3) network topology information defining routes to endpoints of a network; receiving, with the ALTO server, a topology information advertisement that conforms to the routing protocol, wherein the topology information advertisement specifies one or more routes and includes network address information identifying one or more of the endpoints, wherein the topology information advertisement further includes an endpoint type identifier set to one of a first value and a second value, wherein the first value specifies the identified endpoints are consumers of a content delivery service and the second value specifies the identified endpoints are providers of a content delivery service; aggregating, with the ALTO server, the endpoints into one or more topological groupings associated with respective provider-defined identifiers (PIDs), wherein each PID of the PIDs is associated with a different subset of the endpoints; assigning a PID attribute value corresponding to the endpoint type identifier to each PID of the PIDs associated with any of the identified endpoints, wherein the PID attribute value assigned to a PID specifies an endpoint type for endpoints associated with the PID; and generating, with the ALTO server, an ALTO network map that includes a respective PID entry to describe each PID of the PIDs associated with any of the identified endpoints, wherein each PID entry includes a PID-type field that stores the assigned PID attribute value for the PID described by the PID entry.