Patent ID: 7975282

Claim:
A method comprising: filling a first client playback buffer with a portion of a video packet (VP) stream having a first VP stream time delimitation received from a VP source via a packet transmission network; receiving by the first client, from a server, a caching policy via the packet transmission network, wherein the caching policy comprises at least one of: an Initial Play-out Position IPP) policy and a Live Stream Position (LSP) policy; filling a first client distributed stream cache with the portion of the VP stream having the first stream time delimitation according to the at least one of the IPP policy and the LSP policy wherein: (a) if the IPP policy is received by the client, filling the first client distributed stream cache with blocks of the VP stream, wherein the first client distributed stream cache comprises the portion of the VP stream resident in at least one of: a first time interval whose endpoints envelope a playback position point of the first client, and a second time interval whose first closed endpoint is the playback position point of the first client, as based on a quantization factor received by the first client; (b) if the LSP policy is received by the first client then filling the first client distributed stream cache directly with a currently broadcasted portion of the VP stream source; (c) if both policies are received by the client, then bifurcating the first client distributed stream cache and filling each bifurcated cache according to the IPP and LSP policies; notifying the server of the portion of the VP stream having the first VP stream time delimitation stored in the first client distributed stream cache being available for access via the packet transmission network; requesting to the server, by a second client having a second playback buffer, a second portion of the VP stream having a second VP stream time delimitation; and if the second VP stream time delimitation comprises the first VP stream time delimitation, then filling the second playback buffer with the portion of the VP stream having the first VP stream time delimitation received from the first client via the packet transmission network.