Patent ID: 7363361
Filing Date: 2008-04-22
Classification: H04L

Abstract:
1. A process for a secure content delivery and global traffic management network, comprising the steps of: hosting customer content that can be cached and/or stored on a plurality of caching servers connected to said network; wherein said customer is a customer of a service that manages said plurality of caching servers, said customer paying a fee to said service for hosting customer content on said caching servers; wherein said caching servers respond to requests for said hosted customer content; receiving a user request for customer content on a customer server; load balancing user requests directed to customer servers among a plurality of customer servers; wherein said plurality of customer servers are managed by said customer; authorizing the user on said customer server for access to the requested customer content; calculating an authorization value on said customer server using a secret key if the user is an authorized user; wherein said secret key is shared between said customer server and caching servers that serve content for said customer server; wherein said customer server returns a Universal Resource Locator (URL) to an authorized user in response to the user's customer content request; wherein said URL specifies a caching server that hosts said requested customer content; load balancing requests for hosted customer content among said plurality of caching servers; wherein said customer server load balancing step and said caching server load balancing step are performed by an integrated load balancer; and wherein said URL contains said authorization value.