Patent ID: 8977766
Filing Date: 2015-03-10
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. For a content streaming system comprising at least a load balancer, an administrative site, a first set of ingest servers, and a second set of caching servers, a method for zero configuration scaling of the content streaming system, the method comprising: configuring the first set of ingest servers with parameters, the parameters comprising identifying credentials enabling a content provider to publish a content stream to at least one ingest server of the first set of ingest servers; registering the first set of ingest servers with the content streaming system, wherein said registering comprises (i) the first set of ingest servers periodically updating the load balancer with a first set of addresses identifying each available and operational ingest server and (ii) the first set of ingest servers periodically obtaining from the administrative site, a second set of addresses identifying each available and operational caching server from the second set of caching servers; distributing, by operation of the load balancer, a first content stream to a first ingest server of the first set of ingest servers, selected by the load balancer, based on a most recent periodic update of the first set of addresses from the first set of ingest servers, wherein the first content stream is sent by the content provider using said parameters; enabling the second set of caching servers access to the first content stream by publishing the first content stream at the first ingest server when said content stream parameters are verified against the parameters configured to the first ingest server and by passing, from the first ingest server to each caching server identified in a most recent copy of the second set of addresses that the first ingest server obtains from the administrative site, a first message identifying at least the first content stream available for streaming to content consumers from the first ingest server; scaling ingest capacity of the content streaming system by adding a new ingest server to the first set of ingest servers, configuring the new ingest server with said parameters, and registering the new ingest server with the content streaming system by the new ingest server periodically updating the load balancer to include the new ingest server address in the first set of addresses and by the new ingest server periodically obtaining the second set of addresses from the administrative site; distributing, by operation of the load balancer, a second content stream to the new ingest server selected by the load balancer on a most recent periodic update of the first set of addresses from the first set of ingest servers, wherein the second content stream is sent by the content provider using said parameters; and enabling the second set of caching servers access to the second content stream by publishing the second content stream at the new ingest server when said content stream parameters are verified against the parameters configured to the new ingest server and by passing, from the new ingest server to each caching server identified in a most recent copy of the second set of addresses, obtained by the new ingested server from the administrative site, a second message identifying at least the second content stream that is available for streaming to content consumers from the new ingest server.