Patent ID: 8918535

Claim:
A method for operating a proxy computer in a streaming video delivery network to enforce video streaming policies for clients using bitrate adaptation and video playout rate reduction, comprising: performing video streaming by caching video segments from a video content server and delivering cached video segments to the clients, the caching including predictively prefetching future video segments; monitoring a variety of operational information including subscriber service level agreement (SLA) information, local network bandwidth at the proxy computer, and presence of congestion in the network; using the operational information to calculate desired operational parameters for the network including a target bitrate for delivery of the video segments and an optimal bitrate for prefetching video segments; and notifying a client of network conditions and the need for modification of the playout rate at which the video segments are to be rendered at the client to obtain a desired mix of quality playback and conformance to the desired operational parameters of the network.