Patent ID: 7213075

Claim:
A method for transferring multimedia data using a data communication system, comprising the steps of: storing on an application server a multimedia file including a plurality groups of multimedia data, each of the groups having a predetermined data size; receiving a client request and reading a client address at the application server, the client address corresponding to at least one client apparatus; stripping consecutive groups from the multimedia file and buffering the consecutive groups in a staging buffer; transferring to a streaming server, the consecutive groups from the staging buffer and the client address; converting at the streaming server, each of the consecutive groups received from the staging buffer into a format readable by the at least one client apparatus; sending each of the consecutive groups to the at least one client apparatus; and selectively storing the multimedia file on at least one of the application server and the streaming server based on a number of client requests received for the multimedia file; the selectively storing the multimedia file comprises: determining, in the streaming server according to a garbage-collection algorithm, a rate of sending of the multimedia file from the streaming server to the at least one client apparatus; comparing the rate of sending to a threshold number; and purging the multimedia file from the streaming server when the rate of sending is less than the threshold number.