Patent ID: 7054931

Claim:
In a content delivery system having m servers, S′={S 1 , . . . ,S m }, n active customers, C′={C 1 , . . . ,C n }, and g geographic locations, G′={G 1 , . . . ,G g }, wherein sdel k is a server delay of server S k , ndel j,k is a network delay observed by customers in geographic location G j while retrieving content from server S k , p j is a priority value for customer C i , c i is a total load of customer C i i, u i,j is a fraction of requests coming to customer C i from region G j , a i,j,k is a mapping representing a fraction of requests coming to customer C i from region G j that have been redirected to server S k , and s k represents a load capacity of server S k , a method for distributing server loads, the method comprising the steps of: representing an average prioritized observed response time as AORT = ∑ n i = 1 ⁢ ∑ g j = 1 ⁢ ∑ m k = 1 ⁢ a i , j , k × u i , j × c i × p i × ( sdel k + ndel j , k ) ∑ n i = 1 ⁢ c i × P i ; generating a mapping that assigns requests from customers to a particular server while minimizing AORT; and assigning requests to the particular server based on the generated mapping.