Patent ID: 8244803

Claim:
A method of efficiently downloading a file from a server to first and second devices, the method comprising: in response to a received request, distributing a sequence of portions of a file while maintaining a server stripe indicating which portions of the file still need to be distributed; maintaining, at the first device, a first device client stripe indicating at least which portions of the file distributed have already been captured by the first device; maintaining, at the second device, a second device client stripe indicating at least which portions of the file distributed have already been captured by the second device; discarding, with the first device, a distributed file portion that the first device client stripe indicates has already been captured by the first device; storing, with the second device, the same distributed file portion that the second device client stripe indicates has not yet been captured by the second device; and updating the second device client stripe to indicate that the second device has now captured the distributed file portion; wherein distributed file portions are selectively stored to the devices while avoiding having to perform portion reordering operations.